A Fascinating Snapshot

At the outset, I must declare my partisanship: Margaret MacMillan is a good friend of many years, and she kindly mentions me in the acknowledgements for Nixon in China: The Week That Changed the World. She would have to write something unrelievedly terrible before I could bring myself to write anything negative about it. Fortunately, this strange but interesting little book does not get anywhere near such a threshold. It is a lively read and contains many nuggets, especially in humorous, or at least surprising, details.

Thus we learn, or the very knowledgeable reader is reminded, that there was some concern that Chiang Kai-shek might try to shoot down Air Force One carrying Richard Nixon on his way to Beijing with a plane bearing People’s Republic markings; that the Chinese came to resent the boisterous behaviour of Americans in the bar set up for expatriate Americans after the visit, the Red Ass Saloon; that Mao claimed to “wash myself inside the bodies of...