Most Popular Books by Frederic Wakeman

From Simon & Schuster, The Fall of Imperial China is Frederic Wakeman, Jr.''s exploration of Imperial China—both its astronomic rise and steep decline. From the Introduction: "Historians of modern China are used to contrasting the dizzying changes in post-renaissance Europe with the glacial creep of Confucian civilization. The West''s global expansion to new vistas of discovery thus distorts our perspective of those older worlds that resisted European conquest. The most tenacious of these ancient civilizations was the Chinese empire."

Prewar Shanghai: casinos, brothels, Green Gang racketeers, narcotics syndicates, gun-runners, underground Communist assassins, Comitern secret agents. Frederic Wakeman''s masterful study of the most colorful and corrupt city in the world at the time provides a panoramic view of the confrontation and collaboration between the Nationalist secret police and the Shanghai underworld. In detailing the life and politics of China''s largest urban center during the Guomindang era, Wakeman covers an array of topics: the puritanical social controls implemented by the police; the regional differences that surfaced among Shanghai''s Chinese, the influence of imperialism and Western-trained officials. Parts of this book read like a spy novel, with secret police, torture, assassination; and power struggles among the French, International Settlement, and Japanese consular police within Shanghai. Chiang Kai-shek wanted to prove that the Chinese could rule Shanghai and the country by themselves, rather than be exploited and dominated by foreign powers. His efforts to reclaim the crime-ridden city failed, partly because of the outbreak of war with Japan in 1937, but also because the Nationalist police force was itself corrupted by the city. Wakeman''s exhaustively researched study is a major contribution to the study of the Nationalist regime and to modern Chinese urban history. It also shows that twentieth-century China has not been characterized by discontinuity, because autocratic government—whether Nationalist or Communist—has prevailed.

First published in 1966, and now available once more, this pioneering work examines the relationship between the Chinese civil and military authorities and the British trading community in Guangdong province on the eve of the Taiping Rebellion--one of the most calamitous events in Chinese history. The book explores the various factors that led to the progression of rebellion and the inevitability of revolution.

This is the story of two journeys. The first is the cruise of the sailing yacht Cybele. The second is the journey into a woman’s past. After ten years of marriage, Roger and Emily Stratton decide on a second honeymoon. He is a writer and has bought a tiny sailing yacht for a Caribbean cruise. A few days out of port they are anchored off an uninhabited island when the scheme begins to rumble around in Roger’s mind: Perhaps, even after ten years of marriage, there is a way, some way, to make his and Emily’s love what he has always dreamed it would be. Three days later they go ashore and Roger broaches his plan to Emily: “Suppose you and I pledge each other to tell the complete and utter truth, including all our past, good, bad or heretofore unspeakable,” he said. “Suppose we spend the rest of this cruise prying and probing into every past act no matter how reprehensible...no matter how hurtful or deadly or disgusting it seems at the time....If we really do a full job, in complete honesty with each other, I believe with all my heart that we can build ourselves the finest love any couple could want.” Emily agrees. She believes her behaviour has been no better or worse than that of any of the other women in her circle who pride themselves on their civilized sophistication. Nor does she have any idea of just how much she has to hide, or of what she will finally be driven to reveal. In her innocence, she adds to Roger’s plan with the suggestion that their confessions will be wonderful material for his next novel. In MANDRAKE ROOT, Frederic Wakeman tells a story which reaches to the heart of many, many marriages. His novel is a mature and painstaking consideration of what went wrong in a marriage and how two people tried to save their failure. “Why anyone would read the Kinsey Report when this is available passes understanding.”—Pasadena Star-News

Wakeman''s authoritative biography of the ruthlessly powerful man who led the Chinese Secret Service during the violent and tumultuous period after the fall of the Imperial system.

AN EXCITING, POWERFUL NOVEL ABOUT A DEDICATED UNDERCOVER MAN FOR WHOM THE COLD WAR IS A RED-HOT, EXPLOSIVE REALITY! From New Guinea to Athens to Africa, this sweeping, powerful novel traces the exciting and always dangerous career of a hero of our time. First as a dive-bomber pilot, then as an undercover agent, Mark Marklay daily risks his life for his country. And he freely accepts the blind obedience demanded of him even when it means blotting out private scruples or leaving his beautiful Greek wife in the middle of their honeymoon. But he is forced to re-evaluate his marriage, his life and the entire Cold War struggle when he is betrayed and captured while on a dangerous mission in Africa—and is confronted with evidence that the informer has been his own wife! “...impressive beyond anything Wakeman has done before. It fulfills an obligation to entertain without bypassing the mind or overlooking chances to kick sacred cows when they stray onto the path.”—The New York Times Book Review

This title is part of UC Press''s Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.

In classical Chinese, The Great Enterprise means winning The Mandate of heaven to rule over China, the Central Kingdom. This first of a two-volume work on The Great Enterprise of the Manchus is the first scholarly narrative in any language relating their conquest of China during the seventeenth century. (This book was originally published as a boxed two-volume set. It is now available as separate volumes with a plain hardcover. The page numbering continues from the first volume to the second.) In classical Chinese, The Great Enterprise means winning The Mandate of heaven to rule over China, the Central Kingdom. This first of a two-volume work on The Great Enterprise of the Manchus is the first scholarly narrative in any language rel

In classical Chinese, The Great Enterprise means winning The Mandate of heaven to rule over China, the Central Kingdom. This second volume of a two-volume work on The Great Enterprise of the Manchus is the first scholarly narrative in any language relating their conquest of China during the seventeenth century. (This book was originally published as a boxed two-volume set. It is now available as separate volumes with plain hardcover. The page numbering continues from the first volume to the second.) In classical Chinese, The Great Enterprise means winning The Mandate of heaven to rule over China, the Central Kingdom. This second volume of a two-volume work on The Great Enterprise of the Manchus is the first scholarly narrative in any lang

Between August 1937 and December 1941, when the Chinese sectors of Shanghai were occupied by the Japanese, terrorist wars broke out between Nationalist secret agents and assassins of the Japanese military authorities. The most intensely disputed area was the western suburb, the Badlands, but warfare was not restricted to that zone. A spate of assassinations, bombings, and machine gun raids took place under the noses of the authorities. Thanks to the release of secret Chinese police files by the CIA, the inner workings of these terrorist groups and their links to the notorious Green Gang can now be exposed for the first time. In so doing, this book also explores the social history of Shanghai''s underworld, the worsening relations between the US and Japan before World War II, and the rivalry between leaders Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Jingwei during China''s War of Resistance.

The conveners (the editors of this book) of the September 1989 Four Anniversaries China Conference in Annapolis, asked the contributors to look back from that point in time to consider four major events in modern Chinese history in the perspective of the rapid changes that were shaping the Chinese society, economy, polity, and sense of place in the world in the 1980s, a time when China was making rapid strides toward becoming more integrated with the outside world. With contributions by distinguished scholars in the field, the four anniversaries considered are the High Qing, the May Fourth Movement, forty years of communism in China, and ten years of the Deng era.

Life of an American wastrel on a British colonial island.

"A scathing satire on radio advertising, set in New York and Hollywood." Cf. Hanna, A. Mirror for the nation.