Red-Color News Soldier by Li Zhensheng, Robert Pledge, Zhensheng Li, Jacques Menasche, Jonathan D. Spence (Illustrator)

From the Publisher

This is the first visual history of China's Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and includes the only complete set of surviving photographs to document the entire period. It is drawn from thousands of original negatives that were hidden for nearly 40 years by photographer Li Zhensheng, at great personal risk, and accompanied by his own personal story. Zhensheng brings to light in this historical record one of the most turbulent, controversial, and under-documented periods in modern history.

Library Journal

Although chronicling different revolutionary periods and locations, both of these books portray revolution in China. As a photographer for the largest newspaper in northern China, the Heilongjiang Daily, Li covered the years 1964 to 1978-the period directly before, during, and after the Chinese Cultural Revolution-precisely documenting events in a cold and isolated region of the country and hiding his work under the floorboards in his apartment. Li shows the destruction of sacred temples, carried out to smash Old World ideals, and public executions aimed at destroying "the enemy within." What is most surprising is the lack of emotion among the subjects in these photos. In the introduction, noted China scholar Jonathan Spence states that Li's work "encourages us to keep on asking questions about the meaning of what we think we are seeing." Unlike Li, Life photographer Birns covered the Chinese Communist Revolution from December 1947 through May 1949 in cosmopolitan Shanghai, where the Nationalist (KMT) forces eventually and uneventfully surrendered to the Communists (CCP). With writer Roy Rowan, he continued to submit stories about "the grim everyday lives of people who had endured a century of warfare," but, according to Birns, the magazine's owner, Henry Luce, was "a devout Christian, staunch Republican, and supporter of Chiang Kaishek" who refused to publish photographs showing the diabolical activities of the Nationalist forces. Birns now publishes these photos, along with narratives from prominent China scholars Wakeman and Orville Schell, to show the bloody execution of Communist prisoners, lines of Chinese "comfort girls," child corpses, urban strikes, and other dreary scenes of poverty and city life. In contrast to Li, Birns captures a great deal of emotion-from rage to sorrow. Both books are recommended for all large public and academic libraries.-Peggy Spitzer Christoff, Rockville, MD Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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