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Chargement... Notes from Chinapar Barbara W. Tuchman
   Aucun Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre.  mvblair | May 15, 2023 |    ) walterhistory | Feb 23, 2022 | aucune critique | ajouter une critique
A journalistic tour de force, this wide-ranging collection by the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Stilwell and the American Experience in China is a classic in its own right. During the summer of 1972--a few short months after Nixon's legendary visit to China--master historian Barbara W. Tuchman made her own trip to that country, spending six weeks in eleven cities and a variety of rural settlements. The resulting reportage was one of the first evenhanded portrayals of Chinese culture that Americans had ever read. Tuchman's observations capture the people as they lived, from workers in the city and provincial party bosses to farmers, scientists, and educators. She demonstrates the breadth and scope of her expertise in discussing the alleviation of famine, misery, and exploitation; the distortion of cultural and historical inheritances into ubiquitous slogans; news media, schools, housing, and transportation; and Chairman Mao's techniques for reasserting the Revolution. This edition also includes Tuchman's "fascinating" (The New York Review of Books) essay, "If Mao Had Come to Washington in 1945"--a tantalizing piece of speculation on a proposed meeting between Mao and Roosevelt that would have changed the course of postwar history. "Shrewdly observed . . . Tuchman enters another plea for coolness, intelligence and rationality in American Asian policies. One can hardly disagree."--The New York Times Book Review Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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 Google Books — Chargement...GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)309.1Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology No longer used [Formerly: Social situation and conditions]. Replaced by 900s. No longer used [Formerly: Historical and geographical treatment]Classification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne: (3)
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For example, the entire Cultural Revolution is reduced to a mere two or three sentences and she claims it last just two years. When the book was written in 1972, the Cultural Revolution was still in full swing. She writes off the entire event as a an interlude set about because of Liu Shaoqi's economic policies and claims that Mao Zedong was able to put an end to it at a moment's notice. Ironically, she claims that the government is interested in historic preservation while failing to mention rioting against The Four Olds during the Cultural Revolution.
Tuchman mentions the 1942-43 famine of Henan, but there is not a single word about the Great Leap Forward in which the government's backward policies were responsible for the mass starvation deaths of 17 to 35 million people.
If China of 1972 were truly reflective of what a historian would see during a controlled tour, then Tuchman's observations would be valid. Unfortunately, she seems to have been snowed over and, despite mentioning a few times that she was with government minders the whole time, Tuchman does not write with the skepticism or suspicion that readers deserve. (