the soong dynasty by sterling seagrave summary

'An all-out revisionist assault on the established perception of Tzu Hsi.Seagrave provides as sad and outrageous a record of imperialism as can be found anywhere in the world.' The author of the New York Times bestseller, The Soong Dynasty, gives us our most vivid and reliable biography yet of the Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi, remembered through the exaggeration and falsehood of legend as the ruthless Manchu concubine who seduced and murdered her way to the Chinese throne in 1861. “The Seagraves have uncovered one of the biggest secrets of the twentieth century.”-Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nankingĭragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China “One is swept up in the high intensity story the Seagraves tell.”-Publishers Weekly

“Easily the best guide available to the scandal of Yamashita’s gold.”-London Review of Books “The reader will walk away from this book astounded and outraged at the immensity of the fraudulent activities that the world’s governments, banks, and spies are engaged in. Gold Warriors is chilling in its accumulation.”-Counterpunch Drawing on a vast range of original documents and thousands of hours of interviews, Gold Warriors exposes one of the great state secrets of the twentieth century. This ‘Black Gold’ gave Washington virtually limitless, unaccountable funds, providing an asset base to reinforce the treasuries of America’s allies, to bribe political and military leaders, and to manipulate elections in foreign countries for more than fifty years. These, combined with Japanese treasure recovered during the US occupation, and with recovered Nazi loot, would create a worldwide American political action fund to fight communism. President Truman decided to recover the gold but to keep its riches secret. In 1945, US intelligence officers in Manila discovered that the Japanese had hidden large quantities of gold bullion and other looted treasure in the Philippines.

The soong dynasty by sterling seagrave summary