Percy Finch, one of the better known Shanghai newspaper men during the period between World Wars I and II, has set himself in this book to the task of clearing away some of the weeds of popular misconception, and of telling what Shanghai really was. The book encompasses, in a general way, the history of the city from its establishment by the British after the Opium War of 1842. It particularizes to a greater extent with the period after the revolution of 1911 and the advent of the Chinese Republic. And it becomes a personal document recording with colorful detail much that came under the author's observation during the tumultuous decades of the Nineteen Twenties and Nineteen Thirties.

The book is larded with fascinating stoires: of the defeated general who swore to leave Shanghai only in his coffin and who did-sitting bolt upright in it and smoking a huge cigar; of the British director of smuggling prevention who was ruffled, to say the least, at the discovery of five tons of muggled opium aboard his own official cruiser; of the Borgialike fate of five high-ranking French officials who died within a day of each other after attending a dinner given for them.

Charles Scribner's Sons, New York., 1953. Cloth, dustjacket with corners showing wear, overall in good condition.