A FORCE SO SWIFT
Mao, Truman and the Birth of Modern China, 1949
Kevin Peraino
Crown
379 pages; $28
Kevin Peraino’s absorbing book covers that tipping-point year, 1949, when Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist Party came to power and things not only changed radically within China, but also for Chinese-American relations. After several decades of close ties to Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists, including a wartime alliance, the United States plunged first into cold war with China and then hot war (in Korea), followed by several decades of almost complete diplomatic separation.
A Force So Swift chronicles these epic changes through the
