Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–45

Summary

A biography of General Joseph "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell that doubles as a sweeping account of America's frustrated engagement with China during the first half of the twentieth century. Tuchman uses Stilwell's caustic diaries and letters to expose the cultural blind spots, factional rivalries, and wartime pressures that doomed U.S. policy toward Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government. The book stands as a cautionary study in the limits of American power abroad.