The story of the 1930s Long March is the founding myth of Communist China in the 20th Century. Oxford-educated Sun Shuyun undertook to follow the route of the marchers to discover how much of the story was true and how much was propaganda. Traveling to remote areas of China and Tibet, she met and interviewed aged veterans, who shared their harrowing stories of the strategic retreat that Mao Zedong characterized as a great victory. Communist leaders were often as concerned with infighting in their leadership ranks as with opposing the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kaishek. Veterans' stories of heroism and endurance under the harshest conditions earn the author's deeper respect, paticularly in light of their subsequent shabby treatment by China's Communist governments. An interesting account of human survival in one of history's most lethal events. Bill McCully, Administration
