Author: Basil Miller
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781494034078
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
This is a new release of the original 1943 edition.

Author: Laura Tyson Li
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN: 0802198732
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 553

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Book Description
The first biography of one of the most controversial and fascinating women of the twentieth century. Beautiful, brilliant, and captivating, Madame Chiang Kai-shek seized unprecedented power during China’s long and violent civil war. She passionately argued against Chinese Communism in the international arena and influenced decades of Sino-American relations and modern Chinese history. Raised in one of China’s most powerful families and educated at Wellesley College, Soong Mayling went on to become wife, chief adviser, interpreter, and propagandist to Nationalist leader Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. She sparred with international leaders like Churchill and Roosevelt, and impressed Westerners and Chinese alike with her acumen, charm, and glamour. But she was also decried as a manipulative Dragon Lady,” and despised for living in American-style splendor while Chinese citizens suffered under her husband’s brutal oppression. The result of years of extensive research in the United States and abroad, and written with access to previously classified CIA and diplomatic files, Madame Chiang Kai-shek objectively evaluates one of the most powerful and fascinating women of the twentieth century. “Li brilliantly analyzes a fearless and profoundly conflicted woman of extraordinary force.” —Booklist

Author: Samuel C. Chu
Publisher: Eastbridge
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
Here for a new generation of general readers and scholars are thoughtful reflections on the significant impact of a major 20th century figure who had a significant impact on American perceptions of China - Madame Chiang Kai-shek.

Author: Jay Taylor
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674054717
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 737

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Book Description
One of the most momentous stories of the last century is China’s rise from a self-satisfied, anti-modern, decaying society into a global power that promises to one day rival the United States. Chiang Kai-shek, an autocratic, larger-than-life figure, dominates this story. A modernist as well as a neo-Confucianist, Chiang was a man of war who led the most ancient and populous country in the world through a quarter century of bloody revolutions, civil conflict, and wars of resistance against Japanese aggression. In 1949, when he was defeated by Mao Zedong—his archrival for leadership of China—he fled to Taiwan, where he ruled for another twenty-five years. Playing a key role in the cold war with China, Chiang suppressed opposition with his “white terror,” controlled inflation and corruption, carried out land reform, and raised personal income, health, and educational levels on the island. Consciously or not, he set the stage for Taiwan’s evolution of a Chinese model of democratic modernization. Drawing heavily on Chinese sources including Chiang’s diaries, The Generalissimo provides the most lively, sweeping, and objective biography yet of a man whose length of uninterrupted, active engagement at the highest levels in the march of history is excelled by few, if any, in modern history. Jay Taylor shows a man who was exceedingly ruthless and temperamental but who was also courageous and conscientious in matters of state. Revealing fascinating aspects of Chiang’s life, Taylor provides penetrating insight into the dynamics of the past that lie behind the struggle for modernity of mainland China and its relationship with Taiwan.

Author: Hannah Pakula
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 9781439154236
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 816

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Book Description
With the beautiful, powerful, and sexy Madame Chiang Kai-shek at the center of one of the great dramas of the twentieth century, this is the story of the founding of modern China, starting with a revolution that swept away more than 2,000 years of monarchy, followed by World War II, and ending in the eventual loss to the Communists and exile in Taiwan. An epic historical tapestry, this wonderfully wrought narrative brings to life what Americans should know about China -- the superpower we are inextricably linked with -- the way its people think and their code of behavior, both vastly different from our own. The story revolves around this fascinating woman and her family: her father, a peasant who raised himself into Shanghai society and sent his daughters to college in America in a day when Chinese women were kept purposefully uneducated; her mother, an unlikely Methodist from the Mandarin class; her husband, a military leader and dogmatic warlord; her sisters, one married to Sun Yat-sen, the George Washington of China, the other to a seventy-fifth lineal descendant of Confucius; and her older brother, a financial genius. This was the Soong family, which, along with their partners in marriage, was largely responsible for dragging China into the twentieth century. Brilliantly narrated, this fierce and bloody drama also includes U.S. Army General Joseph Stilwell; Claire Chennault, head of the Flying Tigers; Communist leaders Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai; murderous warlords; journalists Henry Luce, Theodore White, and Edgar Snow; and the unfortunate State Department officials who would be purged for predicting (correctly) the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War. As the representative of an Eastern ally in the West, Madame Chiang was befriended -- before being rejected -- by the Roosevelts, stayed in the White House for long periods during World War II, and charmed the U.S. Congress into giving China billions of dollars. Although she was dubbed the Dragon Lady in some quarters, she was an icon to her people and is certainly one of the most remarkable women of the twentieth century.

Author: Basil Miller
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781258865511
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
This is a new release of the original 1943 edition.

Author: Jonathan Fenby
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0786739843
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 564

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Book Description
With a narrative as briskly paced and vividly detailed as an international thriller, this definitive biography of Chiang Kai-shek masterfully maps the tumultuous political career of Nationalist China's generalissimo as it reevaluates his brave but unfulfilled life. Chiang Kai-shek was one of the most influential world figures of the twentieth century. The leader of the Kuomintang, the Nationalist movement in China, by 1928 he had established himself as head of the government in Nanking. But while he managed to survive the political storms of the 1930s, Chiang's power was continually being undermined by the Japanese on one side and the Chinese Communists on the other. Drawing extensively on original Chinese sources and accounts by contemporaneous journalists, acclaimed author Jonathan Fenby explores little-known international connections in Chiang's story as he unfolds a story as fascinating in its conspiratorial intrigues as it is remarkable for its psychological insights. This is the definitive biography of the man who, despite his best intentions, helped create modern-day China.

Author: Thomas A. DeLong
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786429801
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Mayling Soong came to America at the age of 10. Her father, Charlie Soong, a practicing Christian who had spent time in America, was convinced that China's youth would need progressive, Western educations before returning to their homeland to take their places as leaders in the fields of government, education and engineering. The youngest of three daughters, Mayling followed her older siblings to the United States in search of a Western education, eventually entering Wellesley in 1913 at age 16. Here she made numerous friends including classmate Emma DeLong Mills. This lifelong friendship lasted through Mayling's 1927 marriage to General Chiang Kai-shek and his subsequent rise to power. After the undeclared Sino-Japanese war broke out Emma began a series of letters detailing the political climate in the isolationist United States, providing Mayling with invaluable insight into American attitudes regarding China and her Asian neighbors. Beginning with the early days of their friendship in America, the volume describes the identity struggle both women faced following their 1917 graduation from Wellesley. Following Emma's visit to China (and somewhat unwilling return to New York), the friendship continued through their correspondence. Emma's role in the newly organized American Bureau of Medical Aid to China is discussed as are Madame Chiang Kai-shek's international fund-raising efforts on behalf of Chinese war relief. While military and political history is not the focus of the work, it is portrayed as it impacts the friendship, which is the subject of this book.

Author: Sandy Donovan
Publisher: Capstone
ISBN: 9780756518868
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
Learn about this influential Chinese woman.

Author: Jonathan Fenby
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743231449
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 600

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Book Description
Following his acclaimed studies of the state of modern France and how Hong Kong has changed since the 1997 handover, Jonathan Fenby now turns his attention to one of the most interesting yet under-reported figures of twentieth-century history. Chiang Kai-shek was the man who lost China to the Communists. As leader of the nationalist movement, the Kuomintang, Chiang established himself as head of the government in Nanking in 1928. Yet although he laid claim to power throughout the 1930s and was the only Chinese figure of sufficient stature to attend a conference with Churchill and Roosevelt during the Second World War, his desire for unity was always thwarted by threats on two fronts. Between them, the Japanese and the Communists succeeded in undermining Chiang's power-plays, and after Hiroshima it was Mao Zedong who ended up victorious. Brilliantly re-creating pre-Communist China in all its colour, danger and complexity, Jonathan Fenby's magisterial survey of this brave but unfulfilled life is destined to become the definitive account in the English language.