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A deeply researched, meticulously balanced biography
that rescues Mao Zedong’s rival—and China’s other major
revolutionary—from the ash heap of triumphant communist history,
while adding new complexity to Chiang’s long balancing act with
his domestic and American supporters and foes.
– 2010 Lionel Gelber Prize Jury
Jay Taylor's new biography … is an important, controversial book.
Taylor carefully reconsiders the received wisdom, yet. … he does not shrink from
detailing the worst abuses of Chiang's oppressive rule both on the mainland and
on Taiwan. …[But he concludes that] perhaps Chiang has emerged victorious after
all. For surely today's China resembles his vision more closely than it does
Mao's.
– Laura Tyson Li
The Washington Post, April 26, 2009
(Click
here for full text)
This revisionist account is bound to reshape the
historical debate over the failure of democracy and the rise
of communism in twentieth-century China.
– Foreign Affairs
Sep/Oct 2009
Drawing on a revelatory cache of newly available
diaries and records, Taylor reveals the complexities of the
soldier and statesman, showing him to be shockingly brutal at
times, oddly passive at others, naïvely earnest, quick to tears,
and always surrounded by intrigue.
– The New Yorker
July 20, 2010
This enthralling book by Jay Taylor of Harvard University shows that
[the] conventional views of both Chiang and the Chinese civil war are
caricatures. … Personally incorruptible, Mr Taylor believes, [Chiang]…understood
the damage that graft did to the KMT. Indeed, he seemed to know that the
better-disciplined, more fiercely motivated Communists would win one day. Chiang
Kai-shek’s Taiwan was in effect a one-party dictatorship presiding over a
capitalist economy, pursuing hell-for-leather growth. Rather like present-day
China, in fact. In this sense, Mr Taylor concludes, Chiang was not such a loser
after all.
– The Economist
May 7, 2009
(Click
here for full text)
Mr. Taylor's seeking truth from facts approach leads to an interesting
reassessment of some crucial turning points in Chiang's life and the history of
Republican China….Taylor does much to overturn the popular reading of some
[historic] episodes and to demonstrate Chiang's contributions to the. Allied War
effort... Judging by his stated goal of challenging assumptions and rounding out
the cardboard characterization of Chiang, Mr. Taylor succeeds admirably
[uncovering] a man devoted to reversing a century of humiliation in China.
– The Far Eastern Economic Review
Hong Kong, May 2009
Taylor’s book is a magnificent achievement, very good reading, and a
sign, if I am not mistaken, of deep changes in interpretative currents.–
Arthur Waldron
China Brief (Jamestown Foundation)
October 2009
(Click
here for full text)
The story of Chiang Kai-shek is so big, so interwoven with the story of
modern China, and so complex, that it has defied a good biographical treatment.
Now, Jay Taylor has provided us with a strong, vivid, and eminently readable
biography of this major twentieth-century leader that captures his ‘life and
times’ better than any previous work in English.– William C. Kirby
Director, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies
Harvard University
You won't want to miss this select group of titles that combines unique
perspectives on rich topics with topnotch writing. Discover The Generalissimo….and
other hidden gems.– Amazon.com
Spring 2010
This splendid biography far surpasses previous scholarship on Chiang
Kai-shek, providing new insights into the savage international and civil wars in
China that raged for almost thirty years as well as Chiang’s quarter century on
Taiwan where he laid the predicate for democratic governance on the besieged
island.– David Lampton
Hyman Professor and Dir. of China Studies
Johns
Hopkins University
Following his masterful account The Generalissimo’s Son, Taylor
has fully tapped Chiang Kai-shek’s personal diaries and a comprehensive range of
sources to provide the most authoritative assessment of this towering figure in
the Chinese revolution and global politics of the 20th century.– Robert Sutter
Visiting Professor of Asian Studies
Georgetown
University
The traditional view of “General Cash-My-Check” as a corrupt and
incompetent bit-part player in the story of modern Chinese history is overturned
here. Taylor suggests that far from being an incompetent dictator he was
actually a shrewd and even noble man, making the best out of a bad hand.
– Books of the Year
Financial Times, November 2009
(Click here for full
text
Whoever believes they know, or wishes to know, how contemporary China has so
explosively come upon the world stage over the last decades, you have to read
‘The Generalissimo’. …This is a great read and a wondrous story.
– William Krause
Princeton, NJ
Posted on Amazon.com, April 26, 2009 |
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you won't want to miss this select group of titles that combines
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