With consummate skill, military historian Peter Thompson provides a panoramic view of the Chinese Revolution from its turbulent origins in the Taiping Rebellion against the Manchu Dynasty to its violent aftermath in the monumental battles between Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Tse-tung, and the Japanese armed forces. The author combines personal memories with combat action to produce a gripping narrative of extraordinary power and depth which brings the history of modern China to life in a single volume not to be bettered in a generation.
Shanghai Fury spans the century between the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 and the declaration of the People's Republic of China in 1949, one hundred years of foreign domination, revolution, invasion, occupation and civil war.
'This highly readable history set chiefly in the rambunctious, international city of Shanghai between the first Opium War of 1840 and the declaration of the People's Republic in 1949. He cleverly, and with few signs of the intricate stitching required, weaves his Australian dramatis personae into the wild story of China's travails...'
The Australian
Author Biography
Peter Thompson, born in Melbourne, joined the London Daily Mirror in 1966. He was a Fleet Street journalist for twenty years, rising to night editor and deputy editor of the Daily Mirror, editor of the Sunday Mirror and a director of Mirror Group Newspapers. In 1988 Thompson was the first Mirror Group editor to break ranks and expose the criminality of his former boss Robert Maxwell. Thompson's first book, Maxwell: A Portrait of Power, written with former Mirrorman and fellow Australian Anthony Delano, detailed the publishing tycoon's rise to power through acts of fraud, deception and dishonesty. Thompson is the author of the wartime trilogy Pacific Fury, Anzac Fury and Shanghai Fury. With Robert Macklin, he also wrote The Big Fella: The Rise and Rise of BHP Billiton which won the Blake Dawson prize for Business Literature.
