conversations.from: human
conversations.value: a description for a book titled Secret War in Shanghai about Shanghai, War, Japanese with the genre: History, Asia
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Before World War II, Shanghai was China's leading commercial center and the most vital and glamorous of Asia's great cities. Against the background of civil war, Shanghai was administered by a consortium of international powers intent on exploiting a defenseless China. The city's seizure by the Imperial Japanese Army in December 1941 ended much of its glitter but not its role as a den of espionage, corruption, and vice. <a href="/exec/obidos/exact-author=the author%2c%20Bernard/${0}">the author</a> deftly sets the complex scene as the different powerbrokers, from ambassadors to gangsters, accommodated to the occupying Japanese. The cast of characters is bizarre, ranging from master spies such as Richard Sorge, whose coup was to warn Stalin of Germany's impending invasion, to imposters and petty secret agents living on their wits. People were not what they seemed: the author reveals the often sordid realities behind his protagonists' masks as they struggled for survival and each others' secrets. Richly researched from original sources, Secret War in Shanghai is particularly successful in painting vivid pictures of the different national groups that found themselves caught up in the city's vortex: destitute White Russians, refugees from Hitler's Germany, British taipans trying to hang onto their business interests. The story moves as fast as a racy novel, yet it is all meticulously documented fact. --John Stevenson
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Before World War II, Shanghai was China's leading commercial center and the most vital and glamorous of Asia's great cities. Against the background of civil war, Shanghai was administered by a consortium of international powers intent on exploiting a defenseless China. The city's seizure by the Imperial Japanese Army in December 1941 ended much of its glitter but not its role as a den of espionage, corruption, and vice. <a href="/exec/obidos/exact-author=the author%2c%20Bernard/${0}">the author</a> deftly sets the complex scene as the different powerbrokers, from ambassadors to gangsters, accommodated to the occupying Japanese. The cast of characters is bizarre, ranging from master spies such as Richard Sorge, whose coup was to warn Stalin of Germany's impending invasion, to imposters and petty secret agents living on their wits. People were not what they seemed: the author reveals the often sordid realities behind his protagonists' masks as they struggled for survival and each others' secrets. Richly researched from original sources, Secret War in Shanghai is particularly successful in painting vivid pictures of the different national groups that found themselves caught up in the city's vortex: destitute White Russians, refugees from Hitler's Germany, British taipans trying to hang onto their business interests. The story moves as fast as a racy novel, yet it is all meticulously documented fact.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the first five paragraphs for this book
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Secret War in Shanghai
  ALDRICH, Richard, 'Imperial Rivalry: British and American Intelligence in Asia, 1942–6', Intelligence and National Security, 3, 2, 1988, pp. 5–55.
  BERGÈRE, Marie-Claire, 'The Other China', in Christopher Howe (ed.), Shanghai: Revolution and Development in an Asian Metropolis, Cambridge, 1981.
  BICKERS, Robert A., Changing Shanghai's 'Mind': Publicity, Reform and the British in Shanghai, 1927–1941, London, 1992.
  BOYLE, John Hunter, China and Japan at War 1937–1945: The Politics of Collaboration, Stanford, CA, 1972.
  BUNKER, Gerald E., The Peace Conspiracy: Wang Ching-wei and the China War, 1937–1941, Cambridge, MA, 1972.
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conversations.value: four more paragraphs
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conversations.value: HUEBNER, Jon W., 'The Shanghai Bund's Missing Monuments', American Asian Review, VIII, 1, 1990, pp. 88–97.
  IRIYE, Akira (ed.), The Chinese and the Japanese: Essays in Political and Cultural Interactions, Princeton, 1980.
  KING, Frank H. H., The Hong Kong Bank Between the Wars and the Bank Interned 1919–1945, vol. III of The History of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, Cambridge, 1988.
  KRANZLER, David, Japanese, Nazis, and Jews: The Jewish Refugee Community of Shanghai, 1938–1945, New York, 1976.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: , 'The Shanghai Bund's Missing Monuments', American Asian Review, VIII, 1, 1990, pp. 88–97.
  IRIYE, Akira (ed.), The Chinese and the Japanese: Essays in Political and Cultural Interactions, Princeton, 1980.
  KING, Frank H. H., The Hong Kong Bank Between the Wars and the Bank Interned 1919–1945, vol. III of The History of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, Cambridge, 1988.
  KRANZLER, David, Japanese, Nazis, and Jews: The Jewish Refugee Community of Shanghai, 1938–1945, New York, 1976.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: the last four paragraphs. Start with the sentence 'WRIGHT, Tim, 'Shanghai Imperialists versus Rickshaw Racketeers: The Defeat of the 1934 Rickshaw Reforms', Modern China, 17, 1991, 1, pp'.
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conversations.value: WRIGHT, Tim, 'Shanghai Imperialists versus Rickshaw Racketeers: The Defeat of the 1934 Rickshaw Reforms', Modern China, 17, 1991, 1, pp. 76–111.
  YEH, Wen-hsin, 'Dai Li and the Liu Geqing Affair: Heroism in the Chinese Secret Service During the War of Resistance', Journal of Asian Studies, 48, 3, 1989, pp. 545–62.
  YU, Maochun, 'OSS in China – New Information about an Old Role', International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, 7, 1994, 1, pp. 75–96.
  ZHANG, Zhong-Li, CHEN, Zeng-nian and YAO, Xin-rong, The Swire Group in Old China, Shanghai, n.d. [1994?].