The Foreign Service Journal, November 2012

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2012 25 HISTORY & BIOGRAPHY China Hand: An Autobiography John Paton Davies Jr., Penn Press, 2012, $34.95, hardcover, 376 pages. One morning at the height of the McCar- thyite hysteria of the 1950s, career FSO John Paton Davies Jr. was summoned to the State Department and fired. His offense? The diplomat had advised the U.S. government during World War II that com- munist forces in China were poised to take over the country— which they did, in 1949. John Paton Davies Jr.’s autobiography, organized for publi- cation following his death by his daughter Tiki Davies, offers a detailed account of his experience during more than 20 years with the State Department as one of the foremost experts on Asia. But fascinating as that story is, China Hand treats readers to much more. “A major new contribution to World War II and early Cold War history” is how historian John Lewis Gaddis describes the book. “Davies predicted more accurately than anyone else, prior to the Cold War, what China’s course would be during it. We are most fortunate to have his posthumous autobiography available at last, in which he explains, in shrewd and sparkling prose, how he did this.” The son of missionary parents, Davies was raised in China. He joined the fledgling Foreign Service in 1931 and was posted to China, where he remained until nearly the end of World War II. Fluent in Mandarin and very familiar with the country and its cul- ture, he was both an actor and observer in Washington’s relations with China and Soviet Union during that tumultuous period. John Paton Davies Jr. (1908-1999) also wrote Foreign and Other Affairs (W.W. Norton & Co., 1964) and Dragon by the Tail: American, British, Japanese, and Russian Encounters with China and One Another (W.W. Norton & Co., 1980). The Latin American Literary Boom and U.S. Nationalism During the Cold War Deborah Cohn, Vanderbilt University Press, 2012, $34.95, paperback, 280 pages. During the 1960s the works of Julio Cor- tázar, Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel Garcia Márquez burst onto the American literary stage, and rapidly gained popularity. But the writers themselves were barred from the United States by a government that feared they would spread radical, anti-American views. Deborah Cohn’s exploration of this paradox led to this very interesting study of the history of the rise of Latin American literature and the establishment of Latin American studies as a scholarly discipline in the United States during the Cold War. The book documents the process by which U.S. universities, publish- ers, philanthropic organizations, cultural centers and authors coordinated efforts to bring Latin American literature and stud- ies to the U.S. public in the face of official fears. As the author puts it, her work “reconfigures the way that we study Latin American literary history at the same time that it expands our understanding of the impact of Latin Ameri- can authors on U.S. writers and the U.S. literary and academic scenes.” Deborah Cohn, the daughter of FSO Irene Cohn, is associate professor of Spanish and American studies at Indiana Univer- sity–Bloomington. She is also the author of History and Memory in the Two Souths: Recent Southern and Spanish American Fic- tion (Vanderbilt University Press, 1999). Left, Right, Out: The History of Third Parties in America David A. Epstein, Arts and Letters Imperium Publishing, 2012, $16.95, paperback, 238 pages. David Epstein examines the role of politi- cal forces beyond today’s two parties, and finds it is far more significant than Ralph Nader’s impact on the campaign of 2000. He analyzes third-party influence from the time of the founders’ original conception of a united government to the harsh red-blue divide we have today. Although distant from the mainstream, these third parties are often the standard-bearers for what later become major party platforms. They have been influential in shaping political discourse on significant issues from prohibition to civil rights. This account of long-forgotten movers and shakers, challeng- ers of the two-party system who prevented political stagnation and pushed mainstream parties to adapt to them, is a reminder of the winding path politics in our country has taken. Epstein’s thorough look at each influential third-party actor in American history is supplemented with historic electoral maps and the text of the U.S. Constitution. Long passionate about United States’ history and politics,