Rating – Four Stars Congratulations to Michael Walker on his assiduous research and lucid manuscript about this seminal 1929 conflict between the Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) over control of the China Eastern Railroad (CER). The CER runs through Chinese Manchuria and links the Russian Far East city Chit […]
Tag Archives: China
Book Review: Traveling the Silk Road
Rating – 3 Stars This is a heavy and beautiful book. Its design, execution, printing, and binding is extraordinary and professional. It is a “coffee table” travel book of startling heft in weight and content. Starting in Xi’an, China, the narrator leads us by the hand and we vicariously travel the Silk Road. We […]
Book Review: Air War Over Khalkhin Gol: The Nomonhan Incident
Rating – Three Stars From May to September, 1939, the Union of Socialists Soviet Republics and the Empire of Japan waged an undeclared war near the Khalkhin Gol (River) over the border between Soviet controlled Mongolia and the Japanese puppet state Manchukuo (formerly the Chinese Province Manchuria). In this little remembered war, casualties in men […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Armies of Warlord China 1911-1928 by Philip Jowett
Rating-Four Stars This is a large (11” x 9”), heavy book–in weight and content. Jowett tells us just about everything we’d want to know about the history of the warlords of China that ruled the Northern provinces (and a few in the south). He laces his narrative with relevant photographs. Unfortunately, the organization of this […]
BOOK REVIEW: 20th Century China, 3rd Edition
Clubb weaves a heavy book loaded with the incredible history of the Chinese government from the Boxer Rebellion to the Death of Mao Tse-tung and a little beyond. I read this tome from cover to cover, including the notes. Conclusion: This is not a reading book. Rather it is a superb reference book that details […]
BOOK REVIEW: The Boxer Rebellion and the Great Game in China by David J. Silbey
This treatise on the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 in Shantung Province in northern China and in Peking is exceptionally well researched and told. Silbey has written this book with keen understanding and the perceptive knack to engulf the audience deeply into his chronicle. Of what I know of the Boxer Rebellion, I would suggest that […]
S. Martin Shelton’s Upcoming Novel
During the chaos that was China in 1935, Randall Kendrick, a wealthy American collector of fine oriental art, and his savvy daughter, Ingrid, embark on an adventurous quest to purchase a cache of extremely rare Ming yellow porcelains. General Wu Pei-fu, the vicious warlord of Kansu Province, offers the porcelains for sale to the highest bidder. Traveling with Kendrick is the expatriate […]
Book Review: Forgotten Ally by Rana Mitter
Rana Mitter has his premise exactly correct. The 1937-1945 war in China is largely unknown and not long remembered. In 1943, Allied leaders decided that the campaign in China was second tier in their long-term plan to defeat the Axis Powers—Germany, Italy, Japan, and other minor players. Yet the Sino-Japanese war was critical to our […]
Malaysia Missing Flight
It’s now thirteen weeks since Malaysia Flight 370—a Boeing model 777 aircraft disappeared. It’s not where the searchers heard the pings in the Indian Ocean: about one-thousand miles off the coast of western Australia. Searchers are at a loss. Flight 370 seems to have vanished into the ether, or elsewhere. Today, I received an email […]
Famous Missing Flights
Malaysia Flight 370 disappeared over six weeks ago. The primary search instrument is damaged, and for now, the hunt for this airplane is on hold. Some of the searchers wonder if this airplane is in the wide area in which they are looking. Meantime, let’s review some of the more famous aircraft disappearances. 8 […]