| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.2

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 291 words from this article are provided below; about 595 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Robert E. Herzstein. Henry R. Luce, Time, and the American Crusade in Asia. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2005. Pp. xv, 346. $30.00.
Robert E. Herzstein's new book on Henry Luce builds on his previous biography, Henry R. Luce: A Political Portrait of the Man Who Created the American Century (1994). Here the focus is on Luce's obsession with East Asia—China in particular—and how it shaped the way he managed Time-Life publications. Thus the book is less a biography of Luce and more a study of U.S.-China relations from the 1930s through 1950s as seen through the lens of Luce in private correspondence, publications he edited, and the wielding of personal influence on policy in Washington and elsewhere.	1
The author's thesis is clear enough: Luce badly distorted realities in the field by refusing to accept the decline of the Chiang Kaishek regime or the rise of the Chinese Communist Party as a popular force. After World War II, Luce consistently pushed for military intervention to save China (later Korea and Vietnam as well). For Luce the "fall" of China was a personal tragedy, which pushed him to take an ever harder anticommunist line, including support of witch hunts during the 1950s in the State Department and journalism circles. By the 1960s the misrepresentation in Time-Life publications of what was going on in Asia finally caught up with Luce and doomed his publications to second-tier status. But during the heyday of the 1940s and 1950s, Luce's influence over public opinion and policy making in Washington is difficult to exaggerate. The outcome in policy terms was disastrous and led directly, Herzstein argues, to the tragic eight-year American war in Vietnam.	. . .

There are about 595 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.