Author and humanitarian activist Pearl S. Buck almost single-handedly created the prism through which an entire generation of Americans formed its opinion about China and its people. Her work and personality first came to the attention of a wide audience in 1931, with the publication of her signature novel The Good Earth, based on her experiences growing up in China with a missionary family during the convulsive period from the Boxer Rebellion to the civil wars of the 1920s and 1930s. She wrote more than seventy other books—many of which were best-sellers and Book-of-the-Month Club selections—and hundreds of pieces in many genres, including short stories, plays, poetry, essays, and children's literature, making her one of the century's most popular writers. As a contributing writer to Asia magazine (later Asia and the Americas), published by her second husband, Richard Walsh, she brought...