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Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Birth of Modern China
by Hannah Pakula
With the beautiful, powerful, and sexy Madame Chiang Kai-shek at the center of one of the great dramas of the twentieth century, this is the story of the founding of modern China, starting with a revolution that swept away more than 2,000 years of monarchy, followed by World War II, and ending in the eventual loss to the Communists and exile in Taiwan.
An epic historical tapestry, this wonderfully wrought narrative brings to life what Americans should know about China -- the superpower we are inextricably linked with -- the way its people think and their code of behavior, both vastly different from our own.
The story revolves around this fascinating woman and her family: her father, a peasant who raised himself into Shanghai society and sent his daughters to college in America in a day when Chinese women were kept purposefully uneducated; her mother, an unlikely Methodist from the Mandarin class; her husband, a military leader and dogmatic warlord; her sisters, one married to Sun Yat-sen, the George Washington of China, the other to a seventy-fifth lineal descendant of Confucius; and her older brother, a financial genius.
This was the Soong family, which, along with their partners in marriage, was largely responsible for dragging China into the twentieth century. Brilliantly narrated, this fierce and bloody drama also includes U.S. Army General Joseph Stilwell; Claire Chennault, head of the Flying Tigers; Communist leaders Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai; murderous warlords; journalists Henry Luce, Theodore White, and Edgar Snow; and the unfortunate State Department officials who would be purged for predicting (correctly) the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War.
As the representative of an Eastern ally in the West, Madame Chiang was befriended - before being rejected - by the Roosevelts, stayed in the White House for long periods during World War II, and charmed the U.S. Congress into giving China billions of dollars. Although she was dubbed the Dragon Lady in some quarters, she was an icon to her people and is certainly one of the most remarkable women of the twentieth century.
"Starred Review. Pakula draws a vivid if often unflattering portrait of a charismatic Chinese patriot, her husband and family, in tumultuous and tragic times." - Publishers Weekly
"A winning combination of measured, balanced research and critical evaluation - the definitive account of an important figure in 20th-century Chinese politics. " - Kirkus Reviews
"This is a triumph of both research and storytelling. Madame Chiang Kai-shek led an amazing life filled with fascinating people as she helped bring China into the modern age. This brilliant narrative provides a wonderful insight into why China is the way it is today." - Walter Isaacson, author of Einstein
"The tale of Soong May-ling, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's American-educated wife, is epic in scope. And in The Last Empress, which follows the narrative of her life from the end of the Qing Dynasty through her exile in Taiwan and the reign of Mao Tse-Tung, Hannah Pakula brings vividly to life the tormented odyssey of China during the twentieth century and the enthralling life story of this singular woman in a wonderfully accessible way." - Orville Schell, Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society
"The Last Empress is the definitive biography of Soong May-ling, who came to fame as Madame Chiang Kai-shek. A rare combination of brilliant writing and insightful scholarship, it captures the complexities of an extraordinary woman in a turbulent time, who influenced the course of China's history in the twentieth century." - Henry A. Kissinger
This information about The Last Empress was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
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