The Long March: The Untold Story

Fifty years ago the Red Army of China’s Communists scurried for their lives in the face of Chiang Kai-shek’s formidable legions. A year later, heroically, remarkably, they had created the legend of the Long March of 25,000 li, 6,000 miles. They had survived and begun the movement that was to bring Mao Zedong and his comrades to power in the world’s largest nation.

The story of that epic march has never been told—and never could be until now. Harrison E. Salisbury has recently traveled 7,400 miles over the backroads of China, crossing the fiercest rivers, the jagged peaks of the Snowy Mountain range and the formidable wastes of the Great Grasslands, following almost every mile of the Red Army’s track. He has interviewed scores of ordinary men and women who made the Long March. He has spoken for days and weeks with China’s paramount leaders—all of them veterans of that remarkable epoch. He has had access to archives and documentary files never before opened to scholars. He has cross-examined historians and archivists in Beijing and a dozen provincial capitals to dig out what happened.

He presents the story in the same style of personal anecdote and visual incident that made his The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad the classic account of World War II on the Russian front. Here is the tale of China’s men and women, their bravery, their trials, their misfortunes, their achievements, the intrigues that nearly sent Mao to exile—or worse—in Moscow, the plots and counterplots, the loves and the hatreds that provide the background of the Chinese Revolution of Mao and his Communists. This is a book vibrant with dramatic scenes behind one of the great episodes in human history.