Jay Taylor's revisionist work is based extensively on Chiang Kai-shek's diary. Its strength lies in its grappling with the complexity of a man who cried easily, yet who “ordered or permitted” mass killings in Taiwan in 1947, “actions that amounted to staggering moral blindness or turpitude” (p. 591). Surely, if Chiang had been forthright in his diary, we would know whether he ordered or permitted the Taiwan “carnage” (p. 371). But nothing on the killings in Chiang's diary says other than that he thought the episode originated in what was “likely a Communist plot” (p. 370).

When a public figure writes a diary knowing that it will almost certainly become public, he obviously has complete discretion over what he wishes to include and how he shapes his image and the realities with which he dealt. Revealingly, in his diary, Chiang did not comment on the 1947 Taiwan killings, on the...

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