STILWELL AND THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE IN CHINA, 1911-45

Pam Ward is certainly listenable during this lengthy history of American relations with China through the end of WWII. However, fans of Blackstone's productions of other Tuchman works, read with sublime simpatico by Nadia May, may find this title a letdown. Tuchman is the most articulate and nuanced of popular historians, and this biography of "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell, head of American forces in China during WWII, is a thorough critique of American policy in China and of the Chiang Kai-shek regime—still controversial topics when this book was published in 1970. Ward misses Tuchman's fine edges, and her vocal renderings are not good. Her Vinegar Joe sounds improbable, and rather like her FDR, and, thankfully, Gandhi appears only for a sentence or two. Despite these shortcomings, the quality of the text and its foreshadowing of American-Chinese relations today recommend this title. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine [Published: NOVEMBER 2009]