Notes From China

By: Barbara W. Tuchman

Narrated by: Rita Knox

Two hundred years ago China's imperial rulers sensed a threat to a past-oriented society in the dynamism of the West and tried to frustrate foreign entry.

Today, one cannot escape the impression that if only it were not for world pressures Maoist China like that of the Ming and Manchus would be happier if it could withdraw into the broad isolation of the Middle Kingdom.

Just one year after China's long-closed doors reopened to the West in 1971, Barbara Tuchman journeyed through its cities and countryside drawing the human face on this inscrutable giant.

©1972 Barbara W. Tuchman (P)1986 Recorded Books LLC

Excellent historical account

The first-hand account that Tuchman gives in her book Notes On China, demands to stand among such illuminating works on the development of China's domestic and foreign policies as Friedman's The World Is Flat and Buck's The Good Earth.

Tuchman's writings disperse the fog that mytsteriously covers the un-propagandized history of China and provides insight on how the Dragon awoke from its slumber in the last 50 years.

Notes on China is augmented with an essay that explores a tragic and sobering look at how the Korean and Vietnam war may have been averted through diplomacy.

This book is a must have for those that want a down-to-earth account of China's often times ambigous and rewritten history. Overall an excellent work.

Great Historian

Clearly one of the finest and most versatile American historians of the 20th century has finally reached Audible.com. Not only authorative and highly respected she has written historiies on topcs ranging from the Middle Ages to Guns of August (the causes of WWI).

In China before the U.S. Ping Pong team, Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, she has some amazing tales to tell of her travels with her daughter. Always the cautious historian, it's still amazing to see how many of her comments of her 1972 trip have rung true.

A gem.

Short but good

These two essays deal with the character of Communist China in 1973 when she was on the edge of opening up to the world again, as well as an analysis of how the United States “lost” China to Communism after World War 2. The latter was also discussed in Tuchman’s “Stilwell In China”, but this treatment is far more succinct.

Thought provoking, as all of her writing was, this is a brief but stimulating read.

China in the 70's

A bit dated but fascinating.