Stephen R. MacKinnon. Wuhan, 1938: War, Refugees, and the Making of Modern China. (A Philip E. Lilienthal Book.) Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 2008. Pp. xiv, 182. $39.95

Nationalist historians often consider war a unifying national experience. In reality, wars more often fragment nations, redistribute their populations, and are experienced differently in diverse places and among various social groups. An earlier work, China at War: Regions of China, 1937–45 (2007), co-edited by Stephen R. MacKinnon, Diana Lary, and Ezra F. Vogel, shows that China was anything but unified during the war with Japan and that to understand the experience of that war scholars must disaggregate China and examine it piece by piece. The monograph under review does precisely that for the central Yangzi River conurbation of Wuhan in 1938, the second year of the eight-year struggle against Japanese aggression that Chinese call the War of Resistance.

After the fall of Nanjing in December 1937, Wuhan served temporarily as China's unofficial capital and the symbol of national hopes...