An Administrative Tangle

Extract

Such is the tale, told eloquently, in an assiduously dispassionate manner, yet neither vapidly nor uncritically, cumulatively dismal in its effect on the reader. The ending is no ending; the book stops halfway before the tragic close—the expulsion of the Chinese Nationalist government from the mainland—almost as if the author wished to avert his eyes from the second four years of full frustration and defeat.