The posters range in size from 1.5 feet square behind glass display cases to 30 feet high and 40 feet in length. Some appear on walls in public places and in residential neighborhoods. The Frederick W. Crook Collection on Rural China contains 40,000+ photos and 45,000 reports spanning sixty years of recent Chinese history (1955–2015). Crook’s collection will soon be housed in L. Tom Perry Special Collections in the Harold B. Lee Library at BYU.
Frederick W. Crook is the president of the China Group, a company that provides quality assessments of China’s rural economy. Crook and his wife Elizabeth have worked and served in both the private and public sectors with expertise in Asia. He served as president over the Taiwan Taipei Mission (1977–79). He received a BA magna cum laude in political science and Asian studies from Brigham Young University (1964) and a PhD (1970) from Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. They are the parents of six children.