Chiang Kai-Shek: China's Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost, by Jonathan Fenby (HC, 562 pages, 2003, $5)
"Chiang Kai-shek was one of the most influential world figures of the twentieth century. The leader of the Kuomintang, the nationalist movement in China, by 1928 he had established himself as head of the government in Nanking. While he managed to survive the political storms of the 1930s, and although he was the only Chinese statesman of sufficient stature to attend the Cairo conference with Churchill and Roosevelt during WWII, Chiang's power was continually undermined by the Japanese on one side and the Chinese Communists on the other. Once Japan met its unequivocal defeat in 1945, civil war again erupted in China, and four years later Mao Zedong claimed victory for the Communists."
Look for this book on the new non-fiction table. (L-Ch)
