LE PALUD, A. M.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

The Yangtze Gorges in Pictures and Prose. First edition of this attractive visual tour, from the library of the investigative journalist Bill Powell, the editor of the China Weekly Review, with his bookplate.The author, travelling from Yichang to Chongqing on a steamer, details the geography, scenery, and culture of the places visited. Some of the scenes portrayed here were destroyed during the building of the Three Gorges Dam, completed in 2012, which flooded a number of archaeological and cultural sites.Born in China but educated in the US, Powell (1919-2008) returned to China in 1943 as a journalist working for the US Office of War Information. In 1945, Powell resurrected the China Weekly Review, a periodical run by his father in Shanghai until it was shuttered by the Japanese authorities in 1941. After the outbreak of the Korean War, the Review became increasingly critical of US foreign policy: "Allegations of bacteriological warfare made by China and North Korea echoed through the pages of his journal, which in the course of reporting news from Chinese sources became perhaps the most persistent American-owned expositor of germ warfare charges" (O'Brien, p. 1). Tried in the US for sedition, Powell was found not guilty in 1959 - a vindication for the US anti-war cause.

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.