From AwardAnnals
Results of the Pulitzer Prize in the year 1972. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45
Barbara Wertheim Tuchman
Barbara W. Tuchman uses the life of Joseph Stilwell, the military attache to China in 1935-39 and commander of United States forces and allied chief of staff to Chiang Kai-shek in 1942-44, to explore the history of China from the revolution of 1911 to the turmoil of World War II, when China’s Nationalist government faced attack from Japanese invaders and Communist insurgents. Her story is an account of both American relations with China and the experiences of one of our men on the ground. In the cantankerous but level-headed “Vinegar Joe,” Tuchman found a subject who allowed her to perform, in the words of
The National Review, “one of the historian’s most envied magic acts: conjoining a fine biography of a man with a fascinating epic story.”
