Henry R. Luce, Time, and the American Crusade in Asia - Hardcover

Herzstein, Robert E.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521835771 ISBN 13: 9780521835770

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2005

Synopsis

This book shows how Henry Robinson Luce used his famous magazines to advance his interventionist agenda in Cold War China, Korea, Japan, and above all, Vietnam. This is the first balanced work on Luce and his influence, using hitherto undiscovered or inaccessible sources. Luce saw the American Century as the heir to the fading British Empire; he failed to see the hubris and cultural blindness that would lead to disaster in Vietnam - a disaster for which his magazines paved the way.

About this title

About the Author

Robert E. Herzstein is a Carolina Distinguished Professor of History at the University of South Carolina where he teaches. He is the author of numerous books including Henry R. Luce: A Political Portrait of the Man Who Created the American Century, Waldheim: The Missing Years, Roosevelt and Hitler: Prelude to War, Adolf Hitler and the German Trauma, and The Nazis (Time-Life Books). Professor Herzstein is also the author of numerous scholarly articles and the recipient of various awards and grants.

Reviews

In an informative but narrow analysis, Herzstein, a professor of history at the University of South Carolina, explores the role mid-century media mogul Henry Luce (Time, Fortune, Life) played in the Asian political theater following World War II. For much of the book, the author recounts China's slide toward Communism, splicing in Luce's quixotic attempts to save the country, both politically and spiritually, through U.S. intervention. Throughout, Luce is painted as a detached, arrogant, closed-minded, well-to-do, hypocritical, spin-doctoring bore, and yet his obsession with China, where he was born to missionary parents, comes across as genuine. In Luce's view, the United States had a post-war responsibility to "teach the ignorant, feed the hungry, and bring the blessing of liberty" to the world. That he was grossly negligent in how he advocated those ideals, blatantly distorting the news to satisfy his myopic world view, becomes the crux on which Herzstein's book teeters. Repeatedly, Time correspondents-first in China, later in Vietnam-reported on the situations unfolding before their eyes, only to have their informed dispatches sugar-coated by New York editors working under Luce's ideology. On that subject, Herzstein demonstrates how one man's whims shaped the information distributed to millions of people. The book, however, is not a study of journalistic power-mongering, nor is it a Luce biography; it is a historical examination of U.S. failures in Asia as anguished over by one powerful but, ultimately, ineffectual man. For many readers, what might have worked as part of a more general book could wear thin on its own.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521835771
• ISBN 13: 9780521835770
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 364