A Force So Swift

By Kevin Peraino,

Book cover of A Force So Swift: Mao, Truman, and the Birth of Modern China, 1949

Book description

New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • Winner of the 2018 Truman Book Award

A gripping narrative of the Truman Administration's response to the fall of Nationalist China and the triumph of Mao Zedong's Communist forces in 1949--an extraordinary political revolution that continues to shape East Asian politics to…

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1 author picked A Force So Swift as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

President Truman sends George Marshall to China in December 1945 on a special mission to unify the Communists and Nationalists and create a non-Communist China. Marshall returns to the US in early 1947. The mission has failed. Had he been truly neutral as a broker, could the mission have succeeded?

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