One biographer described the book as pioneering "a new form of socially conscious art that considerably influenced leftist reportage in the 1930s", because "she spoke of individuals experiences, but she meant her readers to view the people about whom she wrote as representatives of a larger group who chose the mass actions linked to China's emerging Communist movement as an alternative to their despair.

A 1934 advertisement in The New Masses magazine has an illustration of the book cover by Pulitzer Prize-winning artist and cartoonist Jacob Burck.

He recommended the book to readers of Man's Fate by Andre Malreaux, because "it continues the story of the Chinese Revolution where Malraux leaves off."

"[5] Alfred H. Holt in The Saturday Review called the book "a spirited chronicle of what was happening in Soviet China during the years 1928-1931" and recommended it "to all who possess sufficient tolerance to read an informal history that makes no pretense at impartiality".

[14] Smedley had long been identified by them as a major foe, and they falsely claimed that she had brought cases of whisky to the Jiangxi Soviet base and had stood nude before a mass rally, singing the Internationale.