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BOOK REVIEWS 233 Ashby uses a wide range of sources to back his assertions, including captured Cuban, Grenadan, and Nicaraguan documents; interviews with government leaders and defectors; congressional testimony; and memoirs. The author's reliance on details, however, often obscures the larger picture in which regional events occur and which would provide a more useful context for studying Soviet strategy in the Caribbean. Life and Death in Shanghai. By Nien Cheng. New York: Grove Press, 1987. 496 pp. $19.95/cloth. Reviewed by Linda S. Crowl, SAIS M.A. 1987. Life and Death in Shanghaiis a highly readable account of one woman's disenchantment with the People's Republic of China. Nien Cheng relates the story of her imprisonment during the Cultural Revolution and her subsequent years of "freedom" and "rehabilitation" before her emigration to the West. The tale flows so well that the reader has difficulty setting the book aside. One wonders how Cheng could recount the dialogue with such precision so many years after the events. But prison is a lonely place; she had many solitary days to reflect on her captors' words. Cheng writes fluently and for the most part chronologically of the strugglemeeting leading to her arrest, her stay in the No. 1 Detention House, and her release. Occasionally, she skips forward in time or backward in memory to illuminate a particular moment to reinforce its significance. These digressions do not detract from the narrative, rather they give it depth. Cheng was a perfect target for the Cultural Revolution in 1966. She worked for Shell Oil Company in a professional position, she was a well-educated member of the upper class, and she had many foreign contacts. Certainly, Cheng's poise and elegance rankled her captors. Cheng leaves the reader with no illusions of her discomforts, describing the conditions of confinement that subdued and destroyed weaker human beings. Two resolutions sustained her through six-and-a-half years of detention and torture. She prayed to be reunited with her daughter, Meiping, who had not been arrested with her, and she remained convinced that she had done no harm to China while in Shell's employ. Life and Death in Shanghai is the story of Cheng's disenchantment with the government of her country. She and her husband purposely returned to Shanghai from Hong Kong in 1949, convinced that the Maoists would do justice where the Kuomintang had failed. However, they found the Maoists did nothing to make China a more open society. In prison Cheng read Shanghai Liberation Daily for what it did not say. Upon release she found that officials, students, and workers augmented their existence through "the back door." Life was a constant chess game, watching and evaluating each word and action for self-protection. 234 SAIS REVIEW Not only did the government fail the Chinese people, it failed Cheng personally , and Meiping's mysterious death cut the only substantial tie Cheng had retained with China. The government's obstruction of justice and inability to admit mistakes, especially regarding Meiping's death, made Cheng resolve to leave China forever. Life and Death in Shanghai is a moving story of Cheng's detention and rehabilitation. It relates to Western ears what they want to hear: communist China is a paranoid, backward society with corrupt leaders. However, it also leaves questions for the readers: why did the jailers allow Cheng to live, and why did officials allow her to emigrate? Whether or not the readers agree with Cheng, her narrative is thought provoking. The book is a good introduction to Chinese politics for the amateur and a valuable source for the professional. Certainly, the strongest souvenir of the book is a desire to meet the survivor, Nien Cheng. The Fulbright Experience 1946-1986. Edited by Arthur Power Dudden and Russell R. Dynes. Foreword by J. William Fulbright. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, Inc., 1987. 314 pp. $29.95/cloth. Reviewed by Claudia Franco Hijuelos, M.A. candidate, SAIS. More than forty years agoJ. William Fulbright, a freshman Democratic senator from Arkansas, introduced a bill to authorize the utilization of funds to finance a new project of international education and cultural exchange. It was intended to challenge...

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