Price buried two of her three children in China. She, her husband and their third child were killed in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion, their bodies stripped and left in a ditch. Spence writes with penetration about how Western politicians, political theorists and writers have responded to Mao's Communist revolution. Ironically, such supposedly hardheaded political operatives as Nixon and Henry Kissinger seemed more overwhelmed by Mao than earlier Westerners had been in the presence of China's emperor. Originally delivered as the DeVane lectures at Yale, The Chan's Great Continent is not on a par with Spence's major books, which include The Search for Modern China and God's Chinese Son , about the Taiping Rebellion.
Some chapters meander.
It isn't a book held together by a tightly argued thesis. Nevertheless, it's a valuable account of the often distorting mirror the West, for 700 years, has held up to China. Fritz Lanham is the Chronicle's book editor.