Content area
Full Text
THE NANJING MASSACRE IN HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY. Edited by Joshua A. Fogel. Berkeley (California): The University of California Press. 2000. xvi, 248 pp. US$40. 00, cloth, ISBN 0-520-220064; US$15.95, paper, ISBN 0-520-22007-2.
A flurry of books published in recent years has shed light on the dark history of the events set into motion by the Japanese Imperial Army's capture, in December 1937, of the Nationalist Chinese capital at Nanjing (at the time known to Westerners as Nanking). They have served to focus attention on a neglected moment of history and, we may hope, put an end to any credence given to the mentality of denial that still surfaces from time to time. None of these new studies of Nanjing, however, achieves the scholarly depth, balance and insight of The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography.
Joshua Fogel, in his introduction, summarizes the historiographical goals of this book, chief among which is to examine the complicated debates that have focused...