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In these pages nearly seven years ago, Timothy Snyder asked the provocative question: Who killed more, Hitler or Stalin? As useful as that exercise in moral rigor was, some think the question itself might have been slightly off. Instead, it should have included a third tyrant of the 20th century, Chairman Mao. And not just that, but that Mao should have been the hands-down
Jonathan Spence ’65 Ph.D., Sterling Professor Emeritus of History, whose scholarship shaped the field of China studies for half a century, died Dec. 25 at home.
The Good Earth simultaneously manages to be both a classic and not very good. This is not, I trust, a controversial statement: Pearl Buck’s 1931 novel suffered a mixed reputation from the start. While many early readers hailed her work for its realistic descriptions of life in the Chinese countryside, critics derided The Good Earth as saccharine and simplistic.
Jonathan D. Spence, an eminent scholar of China and its vast history who in books like “God’s Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of H
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