An Economist Best Book of 2018 New York Times Book Review Editor’s Pick “Gripping [and] splendid.… An enormous contribution to our understanding of Marshall.”—Washington Post At the end of World War II, General George Marshall took on what he thought was a final mission—this time not to win a war, but to stop one. In China, conflict between Communists and Nationalists threatened to suck in the United States and escalate into revolution. Marshall’s charge was to cross the Pacific, broker a peace, and prevent a Communist takeover, all while staving off World War III. At first, the results seemed miraculous. But as they started to come apart, Marshall was faced with a wrenching choice—one that would alter the course of the Cold War, define the US-China relationship, and spark one of the darkest-ever turns in American political life. The China Mission offers a gripping, close-up view of the central figures of the time—from Marshall, Mao, and Chiang Kai-shek to Eisenhower, Truman, and MacArthur—as they stood face-to-face and struggled to make history, with consequences and lessons that echo today.

Biotechnology crop production area increased from 1.7 million hectares to 148 million hectares worldwide between 1996 to 2010. While genetically modified food is a contentious issue, the debates are usually limited to health and environmental concerns, ignoring the broader questions of social control that arise when food production methods become corporate-owned intellectual property. Drawing on legal documents and dozens of interviews with farmers and other stakeholders, Corporate Crops covers four case studies based around litigation between biotechnology corporations and farmers. Pechlaner investigates the extent to which the proprietary aspects of biotechnologies--from patents on seeds to a plethora of new rules and contractual obligations associated with the technologies--are reorganizing crop production. The lawsuits include patent infringement litigation launched by Monsanto against a Saskatchewan canola farmer who, in turn, claimed his crops had been involuntarily contaminated by the company's GM technology; a class action application by two Saskatchewan organic canola farmers launched against Monsanto and Aventis (later Bayer) for the loss of their organic market due to contamination with GMOs; and two cases in Mississippi in which Monsanto sued farmers for saving seeds containing its patented GM technology. Pechlaner argues that well-funded corporate lawyers have a decided advantage over independent farmers in the courts and in creating new forms of power and control in agricultural production. Corporate Crops demonstrates the effects of this intersection between the courts and the fields where profits, not just a food supply, are reaped.

The Chinese Educational Mission was one of the earliest efforts at educational modernization in China. As part of the Self-Strengthening Movement, the Qing government sent 120 students to New England to live and study for a decade, before they were abruptly summoned home to China in 1881. This book, based upon extensive research in local archives and newspapers, focuses on the experiences of the students during their nine-year stay in the United States. Historians of modern China will find this book highly relevant because of its detailed account of one of the major projects of the Self-Strengthening Movement. To date, there are at most two credible studies in English and Chinese on the Chinese Educational Mission; both are deficient in source citation and tend to dwell on the students' experiences after their return to China rather than during their stay in America. This volume will also appeal to specialists in Asian-American studies, for its comparing and contrasting the experiences of the Chinese students with those of other Chinese in the United States during a period of rising anti-Chinese sentiment, which culminated in the enactment of Chinese Exclusion in 1882. This book offers a slightly different perspective than most other works on the nature of the anti-Chinese movement, which may have been more class-based rather than race-based. The compare and contrast of students from China with those from Japan, which also sent large numbers of students to New England at roughly the same period of time, will be of interest to East Asian comparative historians as well. Edward J. M. Rhoadsis a professor emeretus in history at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author ofChina's Republican Revolution: The Case of Kwangtung, 1895-1913andManchus and Han: Ethnic Relations and Political Power in Late Qing and Early Republican China, 1861-1928. "Rhoads has meticulously constructed the individual and collective histories of the 120 young men and boys sent by a beleaguered late Qing government to live and acquire English and Western knowledge in white New England families, schools and universities. As the vanguard of legions of Chinese students who have studied in the U.S. since, and as contemporaries of the far more numerous Chinese coolies whose paths they never crossed, this compelling study adds a surprising new chapter to early Asian American history." - Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Professor of History and Ethnic Studies; Director, Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, Brown University

Banner-carrying Salvation Army marchers, stone-silent Quakers, jumpy Midwestern revivalists, and Prayer-book Anglicans all made up the mixed multitude sent to the Middle Kingdom by the China Inland Mission (CIM) in the nineteenth century. In China's Millions veteran historian Alvyn Austin crafts a compelling narrative of the sprawling history of the China Inland Mission. This book introduces readers to a remarkable array of sights, from the visionary, charismatic sect-leader Pastor Hsi, to the "wordless book," a missionary teaching device that fit perfectly with Chinese color cosmology, to the opium-soaked aftermath of the North China Famine of 187779. Clear, readable, and well researched, China's Millions digs deeply into the Chinese and Western past to tell a story of the strange yet hopeful result of two cultures colliding. - Publisher.

It was one of the great encounters of world history: highly educated European priests confronting Chinese culture for the first time in the modern era. This “journey to the East” is explored by Brockey as he retraces the path of the Jesuit missionaries who sailed from Portugal to China.

When the Reverend Halvor Ronning, his sister Thea, and fellow missionary Hannah Rorem set out in 1891 to found a Lutheran mission and school in the interior of China, they could not have foreseen the ways in which that decision would ripple across generations of the Ronning family. Halvor and Hannah would marry, and their son Chester, born in Hubei Province in 1894, would spend over half his life in China as a student, teacher, and a Canadian diplomat. Chester's daughter, Audrey, studied at Nanking University during the Chinese Civil War and later spent decades reporting on the People's Republic of China for the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and many other publications. "During the last century," Audrey Topping notes, "a member of our family was there for almost every event of importance." China Mission presents a personal history of her family's ties to their adopted home and the momentous events that radically changed one of the most powerful countries in the world. The Ronnings found Imperial China at the end of the nineteenth century to be a nation on the cusp of change, and they were swept up as both observers and participants in these dramatic events. During their years as missionaries, the Ronnings witnessed the Boxer Uprising in 1898, the subsequent Palace Coup and the Siege of Peking, the death of the last emperor, and the collapse of China's dynasty system. They also endured personal challenges -- famine, births, deaths, and the almost constant threat of attack -- that were countered with songs, celebrations, friendship, and a deep appreciation for the culture of which they had become a part. Later, Chester Ronning would return to China, as would his daughter Audrey, bringing their family's story to the end of the twentieth century. This extraordinary account, compiled from the diaries, letters, and photographs of three generations, offers modern readers a rare and remarkable look at a world long gone.