Profiling ‘The Raider’: New book by UMass history professor Stephen Platt explores the life of a celebrated but unconventional Marine

Profiling ‘The Raider’: New book by UMass history professor Stephen Platt explores the life of a celebrated but unconventional Marine

By STEVE PFARRER For the Gazette Stephen Platt, who teaches 19th and 20th century Chinese history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, made a significant name for himself with his two last books. Courtesy BYU Special CollectionsEvans Carlson with Zhu De, the commander of the Chinese Communist Eighth Route Army, circa 1938. “Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom,” an account of China’s bloody Taiping Rebellion in the mid 1800s, won the 2012 Cundi…