Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #263212 in Books
• Published on: 1994-02-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780802150936
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Customer Reviews

Interesting for its weaknesses as well as its strenghts
Written before the Communist Revolution ['49] but after the Long March, this book offers a first-hand biography on Mao Zedong, and tells an engaging story of the Communist advance. Edgar Snow got in behind Communist lines to interview Mao Zedong himself, and so he is as much part of the history as he is a witness to it. His opinions of Mao Zedong are positive and his hopes for the Communist Party are optimistic. I found it a compulsive read until I got perhaps 3/4 the way through, at which point it became a kind of chore to complete. Snow is famous for often being completely wrong about China - travelling through China during the abortive 'Great Leap Forward', where between 30 and 60 million people starved to death, Snow never caught on to a thing - but still this book makes for utterly fascinating reading, if only for its personal insights into Mao Zedong. Still a good read, but not a useful historical source unless one has an understanding of how things eventually progressed. Put simply, it's a marvellous perspective of China at this time, but it's neither a retrospect nor a history.

Snow's writing is truly captivating.
Snow truly did Sinology a tremendous favor when he ventured into the soviet area years ago. Red Star Over China stands as an archetypical example of "pre-TV" journalism at its finest. Snow's captivating writing style allows the reader to truly feel as if they are riding along with the "red bandits" as they move through the hills of China conducting guerilla warfare. What Snow has to tell us about Mao, is as fascinating as anything that has been brought up about him in the post-Mao era. I would recommend this book to anyone, it is not just a history book, it, in itself is a part of history, truly a classic.

An Interseting Look at What China Would Become
I have been dabbling in Chinese history over the past few years and was intrigued by many of the topics in this book.

Understand before you read this book that the author is an unabashed fan of Communist movement in China--all good things come from the Red Army and all bad things come from the KMT and Chiang Kai-shek. I was reading this book to get a closer look at the men who would lead China in years to come, so Snow's cheerleading was only a minor distraction. The book was published in the late 1930s, long before the war was won. I found it very interesting to read about Peng Dehuai's background and his stature in the Red Army knowing the fate that would meet him years later during the Great Leap Forward.

He sets the stage nicely with the conditions that made successful revolution and civil war possible. He does a pretty good job in describing the main players, although I would have liked much more on Zhou Enlai.

In some passages, the book moves along nicely, especially around the Long March. In other sections, he can get a little bogged down in details that don't seem to add up to much.

Also note that the book uses the Yale system of transliteration, not Pinyin. "Zhu De" will appear as "Chu Teh", for instance.

I learned quite a few things, and got a new perspective on one of the most important events in the 20th Century -- the establishment of the People's Republic of China.