Edgar Snow wrote on Mao and Red China

Edgar Snow with Mao Zedong in the 1930s and in the 1970s (inset).

It is the birthday of journalist Edgar Snow (1905), whose book, Red Star Over China (1937), is considered one of the most important works on China in the 1930s during the rise of the Communist Party. The book contained the most extensive interview with Mao Zedong that had been seen in the West at the time. Snow spent considerable time with the leaders of the Community Party, including Mao and Zhou Enlai. Snow’s book  Battle For Asia (1941) was based on his visit to Japanese-occupied areas of Asia before the United States entered World War II. Snow also wrote of Japanese atrocities against the Chinese in Scorched Earth (1941). He covered the war for the Saturday Evening Post. During the 1950s, he was investigated by the anti-Communist McCarthy committee. In 1970, he learned on a visit to China that President Nixon would be welcome there but Snow died before that historic trip took place in 1972.