The Long March: The Untold Story, by Harrison E. Salisbury (HC, 1985, $3)
Mao and the First Front Army set out to escape Chiang Kai-Shek's army. They would do more than "6,000 miles of marching, fighting, starving, and freezing through the roughest wrinkles of the globe- the backcountry of China- crossing 24 rivers and, as Mao calculated, 1000 mountains. Only 4000 would survive the year it took to reach... Shaanxi."
Ironically, Mao had nothing to do with the planning for the march. He did not even leave with the first group of soldiers. Mao was still weak after a long bout of malaria. More importantly, he had been removed from power two years earlier. Still, he was much respected by the people, and so 8 days after the first soldiers had left, so did he. That he would survive the march, and take over the leadership of China for 38 years, would have seemed impossible at the time.
Fifty years later Salisbury would walk the same path as the Front Army in 1936. He would meet with those survivors still alive, both the common people and China's political leaders. At the end of the book, Salisbury also ponders the purges Mao had eventually ordered.
Look for this book in the Chinese section, avail. 10/19.
