CHINA CALLS. Paving the Way for Nixon's Historic Journey to China. [Signed Copy]

Much is known about Nixon's actual visit to China, but the story of how it all came together has never been told until now. The advance team conquered a monumental task. Welcome to a rare glimpse of the guarded intricacies and exacting details of White House travel.

When President Richard Nixon announced that he would visit the People's Republic of China, he sent 34-year-old Ron Walker, chief of the White House advance office, to prepare the way. Accompanied by a large staff, Walker arrived in Peking on February 1, 1972, and set to work checking out motorcade routes, reserving banquet halls, planning the President's tour of the Great Wall and coordinating security arrangements. Every evening Walker reported to the White House via radio satellite. Transcripts of these conversations--mostly between Walker and presidential staffer Dwight Chapin--form the core of this book written by Walker's wife. The conversations capture the growing excitement as plans were laid for the historic presidential visit, and include many interesting examples of communication difficulties between the Americans and the Chinese. Advance man Walker was stunned to learn that his Chinese counterparts assumed he was a CIA agent whose satellite equipment was intended for espionage. By the time President Nixon arrived on February 21, the hosts had become less suspicious and more cooperative.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This first book published by The Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace is a small monument to a giant ego. Constructed from the taped (naturally) telephone talks between the White House Advance Office in China headed by Ron Walker (code-named Roadrunner) and staffers back in Washington, it minutely details the preparations for Nixon's "week that changed the world." At the same time endlessly boring and endlessly fascinating, it reveals a group of hardworking but sophomoric and culture-bound Americans concerned above all with photo opportunities and media coverage. China, it seems, could more easily have coped with a U.S. military invasion than with the Byzantine logistics of an American presidential visit. At times the dialog has the flavor of conversations between NASA's Mission Control and astronauts in outer space. For Nixon fanatics and other exotic tastes only.
- Steven I. Levine, Boulder Run Research, Hillsborough, N.C.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.