Saturday, August 14, 1937--that summer Shanghai was expecting to be hit
by a typhoon of "violent intensity." The typhoon passed, but what did
strike Shanghai was a man-made typhoon of bombs and shrapnel that
brought aerial death and destruction such as no city had ever seen
before. The clock outside Cathay Hotel stopped at 4:27 p.m. precisely as
the first bombs landed on the junction of the Nanking Road and the Bund;
the second wave of explosions struck the dense crowds outside the Great
World amusement center in the French Concession. This book reconstructs
the events of that dreadful day from eyewitness accounts. No truth is
hidden behind French's masterful writing, as you'll weep through loss of
real people in history and get to know Shanghai on an intimate level.