Recommendations from our site
“This book really has had an extraordinary reach and afterlife. Edgar Snow himself, a happy-go-lucky globe-trotter from Kansas, was a very unlikely intermediary for international Maoism. So the tale of Red Star Over China and its global travels is emblematic of the wider travels of Maoism itself—the phenomenal, often surprising translatability of Mao and his ideas, within and beyond China.” Read more...
Julia Lovell, Historian
“This arguably is the most important book by an American foreign correspondent in the 20th century. At the time it was written in the mid-1930s nobody knew who the communists were. Many thought they were mere bandits. Snow went to the north-west of China to find them. When his book came out the whole equation changed; thereafter communism was understood to be a viable political movement.” Read more...
The best books on American Foreign Reporting
John M Hamilton, Journalist
“in some ways it seems the most dated of the books I’ve chosen, because it presents a totally rosy portrait of the Communist revolution. But I think for understanding modern China it’s extremely important. And that’s because it does, in rather sympathetic but comprehensive detail, point out both the importance of the land revolution, and the nationalistic revolution, as key elements in Mao Zedong’s revolution.” Read more...
The best books on Popular Protest in China
Elizabeth Perry, Political Scientist
