<p>In 1948, John F. Howes, a young American with a family background in Asia and a future as a distinguished professor of East Asian history, traveled across China in the pivotal months before the Communist triumph. From the bustling streets of Shanghai to the towering gorges of the Yangtze River, his diary of the journey has left us with a unique, penetrating and personal look at what the country and its people were going through at this extraordinary moment in history.</p>