Banishing Mao's Ghost: Burnout of a Revolution

Nearly 45 years ago, just out of Harvard and still trying to master the intricacies of Mandarin, Theodore H. White made his way to China and found a land in turmoil. Settling in Chiang Kai-shek's wartime capital of Chongqing (Chungking), then a drowsy Yangtze River port with a population of 250,000, he soon began reporting from there for TIME. One book (Thunder Out of China, 1946), two wars (China against Japan, China against itself) and six eventful years later, he departed, in sharp disagreement with TIME'S Editor-in-Chief, Henry R. Luce, about China's future. In the decades since, he has chronicled some...

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