PositiveThe Washington PostMost of the volume prior to the 1930s is filled with fascinating biographical sketches and vignettes, many of which will be new to even his most diligent predecessors. He is a wonderful storyteller, and his research is impressive, in Chinese as well as American sources ... But the scope of his ambition has liabilities, even with a book that is more than 600 pages. His treatment of government-to-government relations, generally insignificant before the mid-19th century, is relatively thin prior to the 1930s ... When he turns to an analysis of the Chinese communists in the 1940s, Pomfret underestimates the tension between Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin.