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Stilwell and the American Experience in China 1911-45 By Barbara W. Tuchman Macmillan, 621 pp., $10 The Stilwell mission was America’s supreme try in China. Everything before it was minor; everything after, inadequate. The gloomy question long asked—was it doomed from the start?—remains unanswered despite Barbara Tuchman’s gargantuan attempt to say yes. But we know a little better what China’s would-be conquerors (like Japan) have all found out sooner or later, that China swallows up anyone who goes there, submerges them as in quicksand, and goes along as before. And we see vividly with Mrs. Tuchman that “there is no more entangling alliance than aid to indigent friends.”

Stilwell performs one of the historian’s most envied magic acts: conjoining a fine biography of a man with a fascinating epic story. First the man, who as a boy graduating from school was called by his principal “entirely worthy of confidence.” “Vinegar Joe” to the press and the folks back home; arrogant, courageous, brilliant; given to scatological epithets and cruel gratuities—FDR was “rubberlegs” to Stilwell; one of those guileless souls who generally saw right through phoniness, who rarely fell for pr jobs. “Uncle Joe” to his men, who loved the steely, reedy general, was tactless, and did great damage to the cause of freedom by inciting the hatred of Chiang Kai-shek and, through Chiang, the distrust of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Stilwell was “quintessentially America,” according to his worshipful biographer, who shows warts and all but inevitably winds up in his corner.

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David Brudnoy

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Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Stilwell and the American Experience in China 1911-45 By Barbara W. Tuchman Macmillan, 621 pp., $10 The Stilwell mission was America’s supreme try in China. Everything before it was minor; everything after, inadequate. The gloomy question long asked—was it doomed from the start?—remains unanswered despite Barbara Tuchman’s gargantuan attempt to say yes. But we know a little better what China’s would-be conquerors (like Japan) have all found out sooner or later, that China swallows up anyone who goes there, submerges them as in quicksand, and goes along as before. And we see vividly with Mrs. Tuchman that “there is no more entangling alliance than aid to indigent friends.”

Stilwell performs one of the historian’s most envied magic acts: conjoining a fine biography of a man with a fascinating epic story. First the man, who as a boy graduating from school was called by his principal “entirely worthy of confidence.” “Vinegar Joe” to the press and the folks back home; arrogant, courageous, brilliant; given to scatological epithets and cruel gratuities—FDR was “rubberlegs” to Stilwell; one of those guileless souls who generally saw right through phoniness, who rarely fell for pr jobs. “Uncle Joe” to his men, who loved the steely, reedy general, was tactless, and did great damage to the cause of freedom by inciting the hatred of Chiang Kai-shek and, through Chiang, the distrust of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Stilwell was “quintessentially America,” according to his worshipful biographer, who shows warts and all but inevitably winds up in his corner.