Stilwell and the American Experience in China

Current tensions with China show few in the United States are aware of the prewar period when the United States was closely involved in freeing China from Japanese oppression. My ancestor, Maj. Gen. Earnest Easterbrook, was in China during this period as adjutant to Vinegar Joe Stillwell, the topic of Tuchman’s book.

Though Americans have forgotten this period, China has not. Earnest Easterbrook’s descendants, John Easterbrook and Nancy Millward, recently were in China being feted by Xi Jinping at a remembrance ceremony for American sacrifices made to assist China during the war.

It made me think there is a path… show more.

General “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, the American liaison to Chiang Kai-Shek’s China during World War II, was the opposite of a politician. Blunt, profane, disrespectful, and sarcastic—he called Chiang the “peanut”—Stilwell was incapable of being politic, which makes Tuchman’s book the ultimate political biography. Like many great biographers, including three of the five authors on this list, Tuchman came to history from journalism or publishing, not from academia, something she felt was an asset in helping her write in a style that produced both a Pulitzer and best sellers.