Having come from a rural background in China, Han (history and political science, Warren Wilson College, North Carolina) offers a very different view of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution than the mayhem described by the anti-Communist Western media. Certainly there was chaos, he says, but the period is remembered in much of the rural area as a time when infrastructure was built, agriculture advanced, and attention paid to problems of the people living in the countryside. His account includes the little known delegation of US agronomists who reported their amazement at what they saw in the summer of 1974. The book was first published as The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Educational Reforms and Their Impact on China's Rural Development by Garland Publishing in 2008. Annotation 2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
