Books: Understanding Greatness

CHIANG KAI-SHEK (382 pp.)—Emily Hahn—Doubleday ($5).

In the early 19305 every U.S. schoolboy —and his teacher, too—knew the essential facts about China's Chiang Kaishek: Chiang, married to a pretty Chinese girl with a U.S. education, was a selfless Christian general who had fought down Communists and war lords to unite his country for the first time in its modern history. Ten years later many a schoolboy, teacher and clubwoman was hearing a far different story: Chiang's wife was an arrogant creature who slept on silk sheets, while Chiang himself was corrupt and stupid; he...