"For old China hands and armchair travellers alike, Crow's sharp observations, and French's helpful introduction and notes, open up a crucial period of Chinese history to a whole new generation of readers."
Rob Gifford - Former National Public Radio Beijing correspondent and author of CHINA ROAD: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power

In 1939 Carl Crow – an American who had lived in Shanghai for 25 years – travelled up the Burma Road from Rangoon to Chongqing on assignment for Liberty magazine - ‘the most interesting assignment I have ever been given’. The Burma Road (‘the road of a thousand thrills and a thousand dangers’) was China’s vital but perilous 717-mile lifeline to the outside world. In China’s wartime capital Crow found himself in the most heavily bombed city on earth in 1939 witnessing the daily struggle of the Chinese people under Japanese bombardment and interviewing the most senior Chinese figures in the government. Published here for the first time from his archived diaries and notes, The Long Road Back to China is Crow’s typically observant and sympathetic first hand memoir of China’s darkest hour.

Who is Carl Crow?
Carl was a Missouri boy who studied journalism and then pitched up in Shanghai in 1911 to start China's first American-run English-language newspaper, the China Press. He then started his own advertising agency that made him wealthy and revolutionized advertising and brand management in China. He was one of the most prominent foreigners in China during the era between the world wars.