Table of Contents

Foreword--Orville Schell Preface--Jack Birns Introduction--Carolyn Wakeman Photographs

About the Author

Jack Birns is a former Life photographer who was stationed in Shanghai during the final years of China's Civil War. Carolyn Wakeman is Associate Professor of Journalism and Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where she directs the Asia-Pacific Program at the Graduate School of Journalism. Ken Light is a teaching fellow and curator of the Center for Photography at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. Orville Schell is the Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.

Reviews

"Despite the high esthetic value and poignancy of the images in Assignment Shanghai, most were buried because of political sensitivities at the time. To put it bluntly, Birns portrayed all too accurately China's troubled state on the eve of the communist victory in 1949. . . . In fact, the pictures in Assignment Shanghai are notable for their foreshadowing of events to come. . . . They certainly help us make sense of China's political traumas in a way that earlier readers would no doubt have welcomed, too."--"Newsweek International"