Richard B. Frank examines the new international scholarship on the first five years of China’s “War of Resistance” against Japan from 1937-42.

Culled from previously sealed archives in both the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), this scholarship not only illuminates the war’s devastating effects on and beyond the battlefields, but also compels a critical reevaluation of the roles of the Chinese participants, both Communists and Nationalists, as well as U.S. General Joseph W. Stillwell. Frank is the author of Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire.