Micah Muscolino's most recent book, The Ecology of War in China, frames combat as a struggle to control energy, or the capacity to do work (p. 6). During the Sino-Japanese and the Chinese civil wars, the Japanese, Nationalist, and Communist armies vied for control of the energy that circulated in everything from farm communities and armies to draft animals, mud, and the mighty Yellow River itself. Muscolino convincingly shows that attempts to dominate environmental energy were central to conflicts both between and within the societies at war.
The focus of the book is Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's fateful decision to destroy the Huayuankou dike on the Yellow River during the battle for central China. Using a rich array of archival sources from China, Taiwan, and the United States, Muscolino depicts the evolving relationship between the human parties and the Yellow River. Excellent maps supplement his clear prose, allowing readers to...
