Product Description

In 1972 Nixon amazed the world by going to China. The first trip ever by a US President was an immense gamble but a brilliant stroke of policy. It marked the end of deep freeze in Sino-American relations and changed the international balance of power for ever. This turning point in history was enacted by extraordinary players: Nixon himself, red-baiter, shrewd statesman and disgraced politician; Mao, frail, erratic, ruthless; the twin Machiavellis Kissinger and Chou En-lai; brittle, unhappy Pat Nixon; and Mao’s wife Jiang Qing, the small-time Shanghai actress become scourge of Chinese civilization.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #442136 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Review
"* 'Exactly the sort of book I like: written with pace and flavoured with impudence based on solid scholarship' - Roy Jenkins, Sunday Times * 'A fascinating piece of history' - Tony Blair, Guardian * 'Enthralling... detailed, fair, unfailingly lively... full of brilliant pen-portraits' - Allan Massie, Daily Telegraph * 'Magnificent... she gives a full, colourful and erudite description of the participants and their motives. It takes a thoughtful and lively writer to do justice to such a cast of showmen, rogues and egotists, and Margaret Macmillan is more than equal to it' - Simon Heffer, Literary Review * 'Every peacemaker sent to determine the future of Iraq should regard it as an essential piece of luggage' - Guardian"

Review
‘Macmillan provides a highly readable narrative which combines detail and approachability, stuffed with acute observations and wonderful vignettes’

 

(Jonathan Fenby, Observer )

‘Seize the Hour is an admirable example of the storyteller’s power… she pulls us along with her vigorous narrative and telling details’

(Jonathan Mirsky, Spectator )

‘She writes vividly and in detail … This is diplomatic history at its most lively and accessible’

(Sir Percy Cradock, Sunday Telegraph )

‘The deep background to a clash of cultures, politics and national interests is narrated with operatic pace and sound scholarship’

 

(The Times )

‘[MacMillan’s] narrative grips … a worthy successor to Peacemakers’

 

(Max Hastings, The Sunday Times )

'Margaret MacMillan … has now done fitting justice to another great diplomatic episode. With a sharp eye for the ironic and the bizarre, she describes the intrigues, the insults and the betrayals of her characters. … This is a great story, entertainingly told'

(The Economist )

'Macmillan covers the geopolitical ramifications clearly and concisely but also adds great anecdotal titbits about the characters involved and the problems thrown up by the clash of two such vastly different cultures, making this an absorbing account'

(Siobhan Murphy, Metro )

‘A superbly researched and immensely detailed account’

 

(Paul Johnson, Literary Review )

‘The slyness of Kissinger comes across on every page … For a great moment in history, it was a remarkably shabby human tale. Macmillan tells that side of it well’

 

(David Rennie, Daily Telegraph )

‘A detailed and readable survey of the visit’

(Jon Halliday, Guardian )

Max Hastings, The Sunday Times
[MacMillan's] narrative grips ... a worthy successor to
Peacemakers.

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Customer Reviews

Tricky
Seize the Hour

When Nixon met Mao



Richard Nixon will always be remembered for his foul-mouthed outbursts that recorded his anger and frustration when he realized in the White House that his grip on the Presidency was being prised loose by the Watergate fiasco. He became the President reviled by the world only saved from impeachment by the charity of his successor, Gerald Ford.

Nixon, the emotionally challenged loner, the son of a Quaker mother, always seemed ill at ease when greeting visitors in the Oval Office, yet he could have been a great President. He had steely purpose and high intelligence but, unlike Bill Clinton, he lacked star quality, charisma.
Yet he was that rare person, an American leader who was also deeply in
terested and concerned about foreign affairs, particularly China.

America and China were not merely poles apart, they were worlds apart and, in l972 Richard Milhouse Nixon flew to Beijing with his security adviser, Henry Kissinger ,by his side and metaphorically shook the hand of Chairman Mao, a gesture that ended many years of cold war hostility. The two leaders, Mao aged and nearing the end of his years of mighty power and Nixon were aware of the historic importance of the meeting.

They exchanged polite compliments, talked of world leaders they had met and, significantly, when Nixon tried to raise matters that interested him, Mao, according to author Margaret MacMillan, waved him off

. Today, China has become a mighty industrial force, a huge exporter to the extent that we in the West are astonished by the variety of everyday goods and items that are marked "Made in China". Nixon shook a hand, in effect apologizing for U.S. envoy John Foster Dulles's refusal to shake hands with the Chinese after the Korea adventure, and Nixon's gesture might well have launched the later explosion of China's economic might.

Members of the Cote d'Azur Men's Book Club as a group thought that Seize the Hour was another beautifully written book from Margaret MacMillan, following her best selling success with Peacemakers her record of the Paris Peace Conference of l9l9, but they also felt the subject matter was "too light", in the sense that the handshake across the China Sea did not shake the world.
It was, however, an important phase in world politics.

One has to accept that the retired scientists, physicists, psychologists, accountants and journalists have a point and that modern history events are not really historically significant until many more years have passed, yet Seize the Hour is a fascinating glimpse into both China and the sometimes troubled Nixon who continually worried that Henry Kissinger was grabbing all the public glory. Kissinger had spent, after all, three years setting up the meeting; The Chinese came to know and like him while Nixon was probably seen as in a less favourable light.
At the time of that meeting in Beijing - the two men did not meet again on that visit, probably because Mao was too ill - both had problems on the domestic front, Nixon largely ignored his wife, Pat (she wore a red outfit despite warnings that the Chinese associated the colour red wth certain ladies} and Mao, cosseted by teams of young lady nurses, had banned his own wife from the bedroom.
Mao feared the Soviet Union - China believed for a long time that the Russians would drop a nuclear bomb on them - and Nixon feared using chopsticks ,socializing;The Press and Kissinger's growing influence.

In the years after his resignation , Nixon became a regular and much admired visitor to China.
Currently in Britain, we have Tony Blair deciding what should be his legacy and Gordan Brown ready to make his mark as Prime Minister;In the States George Bush is somewhast embattled and in France Nicholas Sarkozy faces a tough battle to give France a new face, and new direction.
Richard Nixon became the world leader nobody trusted, a fate unlikely to befall today's top politicians, one hopes!
Nixon is remembered for the Watergate scandal that disgraced the Republican Party, his machinations in Creep, the Campaign to re-elect the President and his repetitous use of four letter words when the Whige House tapes were made public; He is not remembered for that handshake with Chairman Mao Pity!



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ends

Amazing!
This book is quite simply wonderful. Margaret is obviously a very talented and accurate writer and i recommend this to everyone.