UMass historian Stephen Platt Authors “The Raider”’

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The Cundill Prize-winning UMass historian Stephen R. Platt published his fourth book, The Raider: The Untold Story of a Renegade Marine and the Birth of U.S. Special Forces in World War II (Alfred A. Knopf, 2025).  The Raider is the first authoritative biography of forgotten World War II icon Evans Carlson, secret confidant of FDR, commander of America’s first modern special forces battalion, and one of the most decorated, legendary, and controversial officers of his time. The Wall Street Journal called it a “top-grade” book and compared it to two Pulitzer Prize-winners, Barbara Tuchman’s 1971 Stilwell and the American Experience in China, and Neil Sheehan’s 1988 A Bright Shining Lie.

After embedding with Mao’s communist forces during the Sino-Japanese War, Carlson trained his own Marine battalion to fight with Chinese guerilla tactics and dedicated the rest of his life to bridging the cultural divide between the U.S. and China. His wartime heroics in the Pacific propelled him to fame—he was the subject of a Hollywood movie, a household name, and introduced the term “gung-ho” to the English language. But his reputation was destroyed during the McCarthy Era after he was accused of being a communist radical. The Raider is a stunning account of Evans Carlson’s forgotten life and legacy; through Carlson, the book presents a WWII history that spans the U.S., China, and the Pacific, revealing the root of geopolitical tensions between Chinese communists and nationalists, mainland China and Taiwan, and the U.S. and China today.

Stephen Platt is the first historian to receive access to Carlson’s family letters, correspondence, and private journals, allowing him to depict Carlson’s complex interior alongside the dramatic events of his life in cinematic detail. Platt tells vivid, gripping tales of fighting in China and the Pacific—from island raids to guerilla marches—and demonstrates how Carlson became legendary for his audacity and courage on the battlefield. At the same time, Platt reveals Carlson’s dreamy idealism—how he admired the Chinese and spent much of his life trying to improve the relationship between Americans and Chinese people. The result, as Platt writes, is a life “riven by contradictions…a ruthless battlefield commander who led his men in discussions of social progress and racial equality…a World War II hero who would be all but disowned by his service, pilloried as a suspected radical, and forgotten in the postwar era.”

As famed historian Adam Hochschild puts it, “through the life of one man caught, in a way, between the U.S. and China, Stephen R. Platt tells a larger tale about the two countries whose relationship helped shape the last century and which may define this one.” The result, in his words, is “a fascinating, moving, and unexpected story.” 

An award-winning historian of China and the West in the 19th and 20th centuries, Platt is also author of Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War (Knopf, 2012) and Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age (Knopf, 2018).

For more on The Raider and to order a copy of the book, visit the Penguin Random House website.