In the decades since, he has chronicled some of the major events of our time, from Europe's postwar recovery (Fire in the Ashes, 1953) to America's shifting politics (The Making of the President series, 1960 to 1980). This spring, Pulitzer Prizewinner White returned to China for his first extended visit since the mid-1940s (in 1972 he covered Richard Nixon's brief trip). For nearly two months he crisscrossed China, revisiting Chongqing, now a bursting-at-the-seams metropolitan area of 14 million, exploring the crowded alleys and broad boulevards of Peking and interviewing scores of Chinese, from peasants to Politburo members. Once again he found a land in turmoil; this time, however, it was the turmoil not of war but of change.
mandag 2. september 2024
Theodore White: Banishing Mao's Ghost. Burnout of a Revolution (1983)
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 of the major events of our time, from Europe's postwar recovery (Fire in the Ashes, 1953) to America's shifting politics (The Making of the President series, 1960 to 1980). This spring, Pulitzer Prizewinner White returned to China for his first extended visit since the mid-1940s (in 1972 he covered Richard Nixon's brief trip). For nearly two months he crisscrossed China, revisiting Chongqing, now a bursting-at-the-seams metropolitan area of 14 million, exploring the crowded alleys and broad boulevards of Peking and interviewing scores of Chinese, from peasants to Politburo members. Once again he found a land in turmoil; this time, however, it was the turmoil not of war but of change.
In the decades since, he has chronicled some of the major events of our time, from Europe's postwar recovery (Fire in the Ashes, 1953) to America's shifting politics (The Making of the President series, 1960 to 1980). This spring, Pulitzer Prizewinner White returned to China for his first extended visit since the mid-1940s (in 1972 he covered Richard Nixon's brief trip). For nearly two months he crisscrossed China, revisiting Chongqing, now a bursting-at-the-seams metropolitan area of 14 million, exploring the crowded alleys and broad boulevards of Peking and interviewing scores of Chinese, from peasants to Politburo members. Once again he found a land in turmoil; this time, however, it was the turmoil not of war but of change.
