“1949 by 龍應台” is a book for the unknown people get crossfire between wars. It is the most neglected part of the human history. If you read books about the modern history, you always have a kind of feeling that something must be or must have been missing. So a prudent reader searches more information from different sources in order to verify the facts. If you try to find more information about the common people in the history book, you will be very disappointed. Most of the story about the common people instead can be found in novels or magazines. But the stories in novels or magazines are not rigorous in verifying facts. To most Chinese, the modern history (1945-2010) is a giant jigsaw puzzle. You don’t trust the history books written by both sides of the regime. Here I think 龍’s book is valuable in documenting many stories of the common people before they pass away or fade away from the history. When you finish reading this book, you inevitably will have this feeling that wars are hell, terrible, disastrous & better to avoid them at all cost.
PS: 龍 應 台 is a woman. Her ‘野火集’ had a lot of influences to the society in Taiwan. If we rate the most influential women from Taiwan in the pass 60 years, we may come up with the list like this: (note: we are talking about INFLUENTIAL only, not GREAT, not PRETTY, not INTELLIGENT, not ...)
王錦雲 (釋證嚴) (Most influential in the time span: 1966-2010). Religion & Philanthropy
瓊 瑤 (1960-1980) Novel
鄧 麗 君 (1970-1990) Music
龍 應 台 (1990-2010) History & current affairs
Of course, this is subjective. I think everyone should have his/her list.
