Stephen G. Craft, American Justice in Taiwan: The 1957 Riots and Cold War Foreign Policy. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2016. 267 pp. $45.00.

One spring evening in 1957, in a small house outside Taipei, the wife of U.S. Army Master Sergeant Robert G. Reynolds screamed for her husband. Someone had peeped at her through a bathroom window while she was in the shower. Reynolds grabbed his pistol, rushed outside, and shot a Chinese man, Liu Ziran, who was in their garden. In keeping with bilateral agreements, a U.S. military court in Taipei tried Reynolds for manslaughter. On 23 May 1957 the court found the sergeant innocent, and a U.S. Air Force plane flew him and his wife to the Philippines the next day, provoking an uproar in the Taiwan press. Liu's widow tearfully protested in front of the U.S. embassy in Taipei, and her woes were broadcast throughout the island. Hundreds of young demonstrators began gathering outside the U.S. embassy to protest the acquittal, and by midday the original crowd of 200 had...