My First Revolution

During the next nine months they would travel throughout revolution-torn China as Mao Tse-tung's Communist forces moved ever southward fighting Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist armies in their retreat to Formosa. Separated by the war, they rejoined in South China and continued their journey -- their revolution around the world -- by freighter to a Europe still reeling from World War II, and across the Atlantic back home.

Knowlton's memoir tells a magnificent story of that remarkable time. The story closes with Knowlton's return to China in 1979 at the head of an American publishing delegation, a retrospective look at the events of 1948-49 giving the book still another historical and human dimension.