In the fall of 1964, sinologist Erik Zurcher traveled for the first time to China, a country he had been studying since 1947. A collection of Zurcher s personal writings from his trip, including letters and diary entries, Three Months in Mao s China offers not only new insights about the great scholar, but also a rich picture of communist China, which was in those days still almost completely inaccessible to Westerners.
During a tumultuous time in world politics, as Nikita Khrushchev was deposed, Lyndon Johnson won the US presidential election against Barry Goldwater, and China...