Barbara W Tuchman

Barbara W. Tuchman won the Pulitzer Prize for Stilwell & the American Experience in China, 1911-45 in '72. She uses the life of Joseph Stilwell, the military attache to China in 1935-39 & commander of US forces & allied chief of staff to Chiang Kai-shek in '42-44, to explore the history of China from the revolution of 1911 to the turmoil of WWII, when China's right-wing Nationalist government faced attack from Japanese invaders & Communist revolutionaries. Her story is an account of both American relations with China & the experiences of one of the men on the ground. In the cantankerous but level-headed "Vinegar Joe," she found a subject who allowed her to perform, in the words of The National Review, "one of the historian's most envied magic acts: conjoining a fine biography of a man with a fascinating epic story."