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The Great Road: The Life and Times of Chu Teh By Agnes Smedley
About the book:
Chu Teh, one of the legendary figures of the Chinese Revolution, was born in 1886. He was commander in chief of the People's Revolutionary Army, and this is the story of the first sixty years of his life. As a supreme commanding general, he was probably unique; surely there has never been another commander in chief who, during his years of service, spun, wove, set type, grew and cooked his own food, wrote poetry and lectured not only to his troops on military strategy and tactics but to women's classes on how to preserve vegetables. Evans Carlson wrote that "Chu Teh has the kindness of a Robert E. Lee, the tenacity of a Grant, and the humility of a Lincoln." More than a biography, this work by a great American female journalist, who took the account from Chu Teh himself, is a social and historical document of the highest value.
About the author:
Agnes Smedley was an American journalist and writer, well known for her semi-autobiographical novel Daughter of Earth as well as for her sympathetic chronicling of the Communist forces in the Chinese Civil War. During World War I, she worked in the United States for the independence of India from the United Kingdom, receiving financial support from the government of Germany. Subsequently, she went to China. During the 1930s, Agnes Smedley was a foreign correspondent in China's battlefields. Traveling with the 8th Route and New Fourth Armies, she documented the Communist Revolution for the "Frankfurter Zeitung" and later the "Manchester Guardian." Smedley wrote six books, including a novel, reportage and a biography of the Chinese general Chu Teh (or Zhu De), reported for newspapers such as New York Call, Frankfurter Zeitung and Manchester Guardian, and wrote for periodicals such as the Modern Review, New Masses, Asia, New Republic and Nation.
What the author said about the Long March:
"Neither facts nor figures, nor the names of a hundred rivers and mountains, can ever explain the historical significance of the Long March of the Red Army. Nor can they describe the tenacity and determination nor the suffering of the hundred thousand men who took part in it."
