Edgar Snow's China (Signed)

Random House, 1981-04-12. Hardcover. Very Good. 10x8x1. Signed. Inscribed by Lois Snow on half title page. Hardcover and dust jacket. Tears to jacket with loss. Good binding and cover. Shelf wear. Clean, unmarked pages. *Autographed by author.* <br> "Lois Wheeler Snow was a former actress and writer whose criticism of human rights abuses in China was amplified by the legacy of her husband, the American journalist Edgar Snow, the author of the landmark book Red Star Over China. Lois Wheeler was an up-and-coming Broadway actress in 1949 when she married Mr. Snow, who was best known for Red Star Over China (1937), a sympathetic portrayal of China's struggling young Communist revolutionaries. It introduced many Western readers to Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and others who would go on to lead the People's Republic of China. But what began as a warm and vibrant friendship with Chinese officials soured following the government's violent suppression of Tiananmen Square protesters in 1989, which left hundreds of civilians dead. Afterward, Ms. Snow began to see the Communist Party, the party that she and her husband had so ardently supported over the years, in a different light. 'It just woke me up,' she said in the Time Asia interview. 'You'd see people being dragged off with bloody faces, for instance. And little by little in my head grew the knowledge that the families of these people were being persecuted in some way.' Ms. Snow immediately condemned the crackdown and vowed never to return to China. Over the years, she wrote letters to top Chinese leaders like Deng Xiaoping and Zhu Rongji, hoping her husband's stature in China could help call attention to the plight of the families affected by the Tiananmen crackdown. In 2000, Ms. Snow, then 79, returned to Beijing one last time in the hope of passing on a donation to a prominent activist whose son had been killed during the Tiananmen turmoil. That visit to China, her last, could not have been more different from her first to the country 30 years earlier. She and her son, Christopher, were subject to surveillance while visiting the cemetery at Peking University, where half of her husband's ashes were buried." NY Times Obit. <br> This is an oversized or heavy book, which requires additional postage for international delivery outside the US.