Barbara Tuchman is an experienced and professional historian, but she misses the mark in Notes from China. Traveling through various cities with a Chinese-sponsored tour group, Tuchman is gullible in her of skepticism. In the end, Notes from China reads as a series of sociological observations of a society she saw through rose colored glasses.

For example, the entire Cultural Revolution is reduced to a mere two or three sentences and she claims it last just two years. When the book was written in 1972, the Cultural Revolution was still in full swing. She writes off the entire event as a an interlude set about because of Liu Shaoqi's economic policies and claims that Mao Zedong was able to put an end to it at a moment's notice. Ironically, she claims that the government is interested in historic preservation while failing to mention rioting against The Four Olds during the Cultural Revolution.

Tuchman mentions the 1942-43 famine of Henan, but there is not a single word about the Great Leap Forward in which the government's backward policies were responsible for the mass starvation deaths of 17 to 35 million people.

If China of 1972 were truly reflective of what a historian would see during a controlled tour, then Tuchman's observations would be valid. Unfortunately, she seems to have been snowed over and, despite mentioning a few times that she was with government minders the whole time, Tuchman does not write with the skepticism or suspicion that readers deserve. ( )

Ms. Tuchman, a well respected historian in her own right, wrote this work as a personal account of her trip to China just months after US President Nixon visited the country in 1972. Her observation of China is balanced as a historian is expected to be with both the positives & the negatives of what she saw & heard. This also includes her essay on "If Mao Had Come to Washington in 1945." The essay by the author shows a well researched work to seek out why Mao's personal message never reached US President FDR. The reader who is interested in China's history will find a good read here. ( )