The Battle for Asia
$3.75
By
RANDOM HOUSE
FOR a book that is at once highly topical and a very vivid and effective piece of contemporary reporting, one could go far without finding anything better than Edgar Snow’s spirited chronicle of China’s struggle against Japan. Among journalists in the Orient, Snow is one who loves off-the-beaten-track trips in the interior and whose firsthand knowledge of the Chinese Communists probably exceeds that of any other foreign observer. When one adds to this background the gifts of a lively, sometimes brilliant style and of a quick, inquiring, unconventional mind, one naturally obtains a first-rate book on China which no one interested in the Far Eastern scene can afford to neglect. Mr. Snow believes that China’s chances of victory are in direct proportion to the success of the government in combining progressive social reform in the rural areas with the struggle against Japan. To read this book is to find suggestive answers to why the Kuomintang and Communist forces recently clashed, and to many other Far Eastern problems. W. H. C.