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SUNDAY TIMES
'Highly readable ... It is an epic tale and Fenby tells it with panache'
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'Fenby has a gripping story, and tells it with great verve and insight'
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
36 of 36 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This book tells an extraordinary story of one of the main figures of the last century who has been largely forgotten today but should not be. He wasn't a nice man - few big rulers are. But he and his times were fascinating. As well as Chiang, who came from nothing to rule China, the book tells of the huge wars and struggles that marked China before the Communist victory that settled the fate of 500 million people. Alongside the wars and politics (both very well described for the layman) the book is full of characters who could step straight out of a novel - warlords who controlled territory the size of a big European country and rode into battle sitting in coffins with their mistresses, the wide open city of Shanghai with its gangsters, tycoons and wild night life, and the strange inland city where Chiang fought his long war with Japan surrounded by a great collection of characters from the West as well as from his own country. I was afraid the book might be rather too heavy and expert for a non-specialist, but I found it a compelling read from the opening episode where Chiang is kidnapped one Christmas by one of his generals. The parallels for teh United States of what it did in China in the war with japan and what it is doing today in Iraq is interesting. to say the least. Then there was the bitter civil war which ended with Chiang's defeat and his exile to the island of Taiwan - what I hadn't tealised befroe reading this book is how near he came to wiping out the Communists.
Then there is Madame Chiang who died just the other week at an incredibly advanced age - she wooed American politicians and barged into a summit conference with Churchill and Roosevelt in a way that no other leader's wife would have dared to do. Not being a specialist on China I can't judge the academic sourecs in the book but they seem to be pretty complete. As a general reader, I thoroughly recommend this as a tremednous read which really told me something about modern history.
Then there is Madame Chiang who died just the other week at an incredibly advanced age - she wooed American politicians and barged into a summit conference with Churchill and Roosevelt in a way that no other leader's wife would have dared to do. Not being a specialist on China I can't judge the academic sourecs in the book but they seem to be pretty complete. As a general reader, I thoroughly recommend this as a tremednous read which really told me something about modern history.
22 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
As a Japanese who now lives in California, I bought this book through British Amazon during my trip to the UK because it has not yet been published in the United States. I found it a fascinating and very readable story about an extraordinary man living in one of the most exciting periods of history in the 20th century, with lots of adventurous passages and some amazing characters like the warlords and the drug Godfathers and Madame Chiang who just died at a very old age. The information about Chiang's private life is really quite scandalous!
Apart from that, what made it an important book for myself was three elements:
1. The chatpters telling, for the first time in my experience in such vivid depth, just how Japan behaved in China between 1931 and 1945. The descriptions of what the Army did in China make this an important historical document.
2.In the context of the current situation in Iraq, the account of US involvement in China has major significant lessons for today - and parallels the author draws between Japan's invasion of China and the US in Vietnam (and why not in Iraq too?) is thought provoking.
3. Given China's emergence as a superpower in the next few years, this is the first book I have seen which tells readers what happened before the Communists won power - and draws parallels between the past and the present from which I drew interesting lessons.
Apart from that, what made it an important book for myself was three elements:
1. The chatpters telling, for the first time in my experience in such vivid depth, just how Japan behaved in China between 1931 and 1945. The descriptions of what the Army did in China make this an important historical document.
2.In the context of the current situation in Iraq, the account of US involvement in China has major significant lessons for today - and parallels the author draws between Japan's invasion of China and the US in Vietnam (and why not in Iraq too?) is thought provoking.
3. Given China's emergence as a superpower in the next few years, this is the first book I have seen which tells readers what happened before the Communists won power - and draws parallels between the past and the present from which I drew interesting lessons.
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Having spent a number of years in Taiwan and Hong Kong its pretty easy to think one knows a bit about the general area....however reading this book makes you realize how little you really understand, even can understand, about this enigmatic region and its recent and incredibly tumultuous and brutal history. A history that to a lesser or greater extent has shaped the world we all live in. I have found most histories of China far from easy reading, however Fenby's book breaks the mold. From the opening attempted kidnapping in Xian, through the chronology of the rise to almost totalitarian power of this most unlikely of dictators; to the almost blase descriptions of unimaginable losses of life of both soldiers and innocents at the hands of warlords, Nationalists, Japanese and Communists alike, the book grippingly holds the attention. The geo-political manouverings of the great powers, the colourful and mostly unsavoury characters that are painted, the shameful exploitation of the common man, all add spice, flavour and context. Most interesting are some of the "what-ifs" that Fenby explores in the latter pages. The world could have been a different place if Chiang had been a more decisive less complex character. It leaves the reader, this one at least, in some way sensing that for all his shortcomings, for all the wrath indirectly unleashed as a result of his leadership, that maybe Chiang's rule was the less bad of a number of possible alternatives for the future of a country that is now beginning to take its place at the forefront of the modern economic and political world order. Sad it had to be that way.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Fantastic reading
Having really enjoyed Fenby's book 'Alliance' (which drew my attention to Chiang) I was keen find out more about the man who some have labelled as insignificant. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Jon 'ET' A
Essential for anyone with an interest in China.
Depressing, bleak and disturbing, Generalissimo is the story of one of the twentieth century's nearly men on the world stage. Read more
Published on 22 Jan 2009 by Adam Graham Malster
An Excellent Biography of the Deeply Flawed Chinese Leader
This is a well presented and very interesting book that covers the life of Chiang Kai-shek upto 1949 and his flight to Taiwan. Read more
Published on 23 Dec 2008 by Dr. R. Brandon
Biography of a supreme martinet
I started this book with minimal knowledge of China in the first half of the 20th century, beyond a knowledge of the key events. Read more
Published on 5 Mar 2007 by Siriam
An extremely informative and impressive read
This book is colourful... the description, the soul of Chiang's life, leak from the pages as you read. Fenby not only writes as biographer but he writes as a historian. Read more
Published on 11 Feb 2006 by "icyabyss"
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