Book review: "The Struggle for Taiwan" by Sulmaan Wasif Khan

Let me say up front: I didn't read all of "The Struggle for Taiwan," the 2024 book by Sulmaan Wasif Khan. I read the first 65 pages or so, and then about 30 pages at the end. That was enough for me. I skipped the middle section, probably another 165 pages. 

It's not that this is a bad book; it's just not what I was looking for. 

I was preparing for a trip to Taiwan, so I wanted to learn more about the country's history. "The Struggle for Taiwan," indeed, has lots of history.

The subtitle sums things up nicely by describing the book as "A History of America, China, and the Island Caught Between." 

Khan traces the history of Taiwan from 1644 to present, with an emphasis on the most 75 years.

Khan, a professor at tufts University in Massachusetts, is thorough and, as best I can tell, fair. He meticulously records events, names, dates. He recounts the many missteps between Taiwan, China and the United States that have brought us to the present state that he describes as "the edge of chaos."

Unfortunately, Khan efforts to be thorough and fair too often leave the reader trying to sort through a bin of dry facts. Strong statements seem to always be offset by an alternative or contradictory point of view. One American leader say this, but then another says just the opposite. Taiwan says one thing, China disagrees. Back and forth. 

There are too many trees, and too few views of the forest. As a Taiwan beginner, I was looking for the bigger meanings and the larger picture, but I frequently felt like "The Struggle for Taiwan" was leaving it to me to figure those things out. 

Some more human stories would have been nice, but I'm not sure, even having read the introduction and the epilogue, whether Kahn has ever even been to Taiwan. He's a top-notch researcher certainly, but he could be a better storyteller. This is a book for deep-dive historians, not for casual travelers.