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Review
“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.â€â€•William C. Kirby, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University“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. ,â€â€•David Lampton, Hyman Professor and Director of China Studies, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies“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.â€â€•Robert Sutter, Visiting Professor of Asian Studies, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University.“Chiang Kai-shek rivaled Mao as a dominant figure in the history of modern China. Taylor has taken a fresh look at his long, eventful life based on new sources, and suggests a controversial but persuasive new reading of Chiang's motives and actions. This vividly realized account will be the authoritative work for a long time to come.â€â€•Andrew J. Nathan, author of China's Transition“American historians tend to portray Chiang Kai-Shek (1887–1975) as an inept dictator who mismanaged China until Mao Zedong expelled him in 1945 and he finished his life ruling Taiwan under the protection of the U.S. military. But this...lucid biography by Taylor, a research associate at Harvard's Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, describes an impressive figure who left China a greater legacy than he has been given credit for...Taylor does not conceal Chiang's brutality and diplomatic failures, but he is an admirer who makes a good case that Chiang governed an almost ungovernable country with reasonable skill and understood his enemies better than American advisers did.â€â€•Publishers Weekly (starred review)“Jay Taylor's new biography, The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China, challenges the catechism on which generations of Americans have been weaned. Marshaling archival materials made newly available to researchers, including about four decades' worth of Chiang's daily diaries and documents from the Soviet era, it torpedoes many of that catechism's cherished tenets. This is an important, controversial book... Chiang emerges as a flesh-and-blood man rather than the buffoonish cardboard-cutout figure he has generally been portrayed as.â€â€•Laura Tyson Li, Washington Post Book World“This enthralling book by Jay Taylor of Harvard University shows that [the] conventional views of both Chiang and the Chinese civil war are caricatures. It is the first biography to make full use of the Chiang family archive. This includes Chiang's own diary, in which he wrote at least a page of classical Chinese daily from 1918 to 1972. The picture that emerges is of a far more subtle and prescient thinker than the man America's General Joseph Stilwell used to refer to as "peanut," and Britain's chief of staff, Field-Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, dismissed in Cairo as "a cross between a pine marten and a ferret."â€â€•The Economist“Even in the rapidly widening field of modern Chinese history, it is unusual and gratifying to read a book that upsets not only the reader's previous views but even those of the author himself...Now a different Chiang stands before us. Drawing on new material, years of interviews with the dwindling number of those with first-hand memories of the Chiang family, and scrutiny of Chiang's voluminous diaries, Taylor reveals a much more interesting and despite his stiff exterior, frequently adaptable Chiang...The book is a huge advance on our knowledge of what happened in China from the early twentieth century to the present day, when an updated version of Chiang's Kuomintang is again in power in Taipei...There will be no oblivion [for Chiang]. Jay Taylor has seen to that...A substantial and comprehensive contribution to our knowledge of China.â€â€•Jonathan Mirsky, Literary Review“Chiang Kai-shek has long been viewed as a failure for having lost mainland China to Mao's People's Liberation Army in a stunningly short span of time. This richly detailed biography argues that Chiang's neo-Confucian vision for a modern China may yet win...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.â€â€•New Yorker“Master of his material, [Taylor] provides excellent in-depth accounts of episodes such as Chiang's kidnapping by Zhang Xueliang, the Manchurian exiled warlord, at Christmas 1936, the negotiations over the years between Nationalists and Communists and the old man's later years in Taiwan...This is the most thorough inquest on the Generalissimo so far.â€â€•Jonathan Fenby, Times Higher Education
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About the Author
Jay Taylor is a Research Associate at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University.
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Product details
Paperback: 752 pages
Publisher: Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press; 2 edition (April 30, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0674060490
ISBN-13: 978-0674060494
Product Dimensions:
6.2 x 1.5 x 9.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.7 out of 5 stars
41 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#239,026 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Since I was growing up in a village in Northeast China in the 1980s, the adult people there liked talking about old time stories, Mao and Chiang are among the most interesting figures in the topics. I became curious about the two men early from my childhood.Although I don’t believe any works are 100% objective, I am especially skeptical about the biographies published in their own country, they always giving me an impression: too biased, yet is getting better now. I chose to read the two men in original English version books, also as a way to challenge and improve my English language ability.After reading Jung Chang’s worldwide bestseller, Mao: The Unknown Story, a biography focuses on Mao’s dark side, in a not well recognized serious way. I turned to read books about Chiang, at first I read Jonathan Fenby’s book, Chiang Kai Shek: China’s Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost, it is a nice biography, yet I didn’t finish, I like its book cover, Chiang’s that portrait is better represent his strong will and looks handsome. Recommend by The Economist, I switched to read Jay Taylor’s book, The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China. I think Chiang’s historical position in 20th century China is his vision and struggle for defending and building a modern China, not because he lost the civil war or a nation to Mao. Being a hero does not depend on success or failure.I really like Jay Taylor’s writing style for this book, objective and tried to find insights about the most important events in 20th century China, he used facts to illustrated Chiang’s personality. His viewpoints are quite balanced, not really Western or Chinese, nor the conventional view to describe him as civil war loser, a brutal dictator who lacks charisma. Jay Taylor spent many years as a Foreign Affair Officer working in both mainland China and Taiwan, and did meet Chiang in person, through five years extensive research, he is the right person who is able to write a extraordinary book about such contradictory figure in China’s history.From ideological perspective, I think his neo-Confucianism, Three People’s Principles and Christian value are more suitable for building a modern China. He was born in rich costal Zhejiang province, traditional culture reserved well there. So there is no doubt, he was man with Confucius value, he received military education in Japan during his youth time, that Japanese samurai code: discipline, loyalty, honor and sacrifice did influence him, everything combined in from his early years, made himself generally a neo-Confucian.Chiang is the heir to Dr. Sun Yat-sen in KMT, he was the winner for many power conflicts inside and outside the party. As an old time political leader, he is no big different to others, master of intrigues, cracked down his opponents, butchered a lot of people without mercy. He led China from war lord period, war against Japanese invasion, maintain Taiwan’s position in Cold War, dealt with super powers throughout the times, there were countless suffering, humiliations, ordeals, these jobs need a leader with strong will and pragmatic visionary minds. China survived from that painful and humiliating period, China is the winner, and Chiang himself is the all time ultimate survivor, even the danger of collapses were always with him.As a Chinese person, I like Mao’s poems very much. However, for personality, I admire Chiang. He was calm, staid, emotional, disciplined, he tolerated many intellectuals who against him and also corruptions of in his circles. He showed his respects for lives and culture, never tried to purge everybody or everything in his life. He is a man with bottom line, maybe, his personality is one of the reasons making he losing many golden opportunities, and finally defected by the extremely ruthless Mao.20th century’s China, was so complex and will always be researched and debated. I believe that the struggle of Chinese leaders and their people made the way for China’s rise in 21st century. We, Chinese people should thank to the western invaders, as they brought modern civilization and the right path for human evolution even there were lot of sufferings and humiliations, I despise that kind of superficially criticizing that Western powers for invading China, it was them who influenced/wake up our ancestors’ revolutionary sprit, to fight against Manchu and cut that ugly & stupid pigtails on our heads, liberated us from the being the slaves of emperors and corrupt beuracracts, finally put us on the path of modernization. Yet some backward ways of thinking are still lingering today.We should never forget the struggles and sacrifices of revolutionary martyrs and leaders who wanted to transform China and won the dignity of Chinese people. The Communists propagandized Chiang as a puppet of the United States/West, the Nationalists depicted Mao as a puppet of Stalin, the Soviet Union, in reality, just as the book told that both Chiang and Mao are the same kind of nationalists, they insisted on the soveignty of China and fought for the legal term with great global powers. They have to get the support from modern super-powers, have to play games with them. From my reading knowledge, as depicted in Jay Taylor’s book, I believe that Chiang reserved more respect for Chinese people for dealing with Western powers. There were a lot of humiliations, angers, sacrifices, etc. throughout his politics and wars.History always taught us a lot of things. What I learned from this book, from Chiang is his strong will and tactics to manage crisis, his belief and love for the country. His strong will power, rationally thinking, emotional style, never surrender to overwhelming enemies touched my heart a lot. It is the spirit I should have in my life, my business adventures.This has become one of the most important reading experiences since my childhood.At last, sincerely thanks to the author: Mr. Jay Taylor.
In the early 20th century, 5000 years of civilization finally came to a boiling point - China, the world's only surviving ancient civilization, must face it's biggest challenge yet. The rise and fall of Chiang Kai-shek, the man who took on the insurmountable task of managing an unmanageable country, to fight the monsters of modern war machines with foot soldiers, to unite the broken spirits of a billion souls, is detailed like never before with a creditable author who aligns the stories of various historical sources with Chiang Kai-shek's own - his famous dairy. A must read for anyone who loves history.
Taylor provides a fair and sympathetic view of Chiang Kai-Shek's life as a magnificent yet conflicted leader through decades of revolution, wars, nation-building, defeats both military and political, during China's emergence from ancient dynastic governance to a modern state. He brings to life the many nuanced, complex relationships among key KMT and CCP figures that may be difficult for the Occidental mind to appreciate. His accounts of Russian and American roles, interwoven into the backdrop of Japanese invasions and WWII, provides insight into the dynamics of Russo-Sino-American geopolitical relationships during the Cold War. Taylor's easy-reading style and thoroughly researched work will challenge the conventional negative standing Chiang has occupied in recent decades among many Americans. A very enjoyable, fascinating read.
The Generalissimo sheds shocking new light on Sino-American relations, and the view isn't pretty. Under a string of administrations (in fact all of them) from the 1930s on, the United States showed itself to be an untrustworthy ally, shamelessly betraying the Nationalist Chinese again and again. Supposed "wise men" like Acheson and Kissinger come across as buffoons and sellouts to the communists. The most amazing insight of the book is that the prosperous, democratic Taiwan of today is exactly what the "wise men" of the 1940s insisted that Chiang Kai Shek could never deliver and his communists opponents would. Tens of millions of dead and decades of suppression later, it now seems that China is coming around, not to Mao's vision, but to Chiang's.
A good prism into the events and changes happened in China during the last century. The selection of historical pictures alone would have made this a worth possession.
Amazingly well written biography. The author had access to an amazing data source, Ciang Kai-Shek's personal diary that he wrote in daily. It really makes a man out of a person many believe to be a monster.
The History of China in the 20th Century has been usually colored by the ideology of the times and of the writer. China had a turbulent History, living the first half of the century in war, and war accounts are usually told by the winner. Chiang Kai-Shek lost the war, and so I think his role has always been underrated. This is a more balanced account of those times, and Chiang's voice comes through his journals, and we can feel the tremendous burden that he carried on his shoulders, trying to unify a fragmented country, while fighting an almost hopeless war against a powerful and ruthless invader. In my opinion his stature should be equal to Churchill's: they faced the same crucial choice, fight and risk annihilation or surrender. Both chose to fight, and we owe them both the same respect.
Fantastic. Highly recommended. One or two orthographical infelilicites but otherwise a great read and very informative indeed.
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December 03, 2014
Phiafield
