Book Description
The most authoritative life of the Chinese leader every written, Mao: The Unknown Story is based on a decade of research, and on interviews with many of Mao’s close circle in China who have never talked before — and with virtually everyone outside China who had significant dealings with him. It is full of startling revelations, exploding the myth of the Long March, and showing a completely unknown Mao: he was not driven by idealism or ideology; his intimate and intricate relationship with Stalin went back to the 1920s, ultimately bringing him to power; he welcomed Japanese occupation of much of China; and he schemed, poisoned, and blackmailed to get his way. After Mao conquered China in 1949, his secret goal was to dominate the world. In chasing this dream he caused the deaths of 38 million people in the greatest famine in history. In all, well over 70 million Chinese perished under Mao’s rule — in peacetime.
Customer Reviews:
Evil Mao.......2007-09-24
Very well researched book. Gives you an overlook on the real Mao and how the rest of the world misinterpreted him. Shows how America was superficial in assessing how the real Mao would be and how it applied pressure on Chiang Kai Shek to enforce cease fire on Mao's critical turning point of the civil war thus making it possible for Mao to conquer China. Mao killed his colleagues and his enemies alike for the sole purpose of gaining and retaining power. All means were legitimate in his eyes to achieve that goal. It looks like we never learn from these mistakes. This attitude makes us helping the Taliban to be a prominent force and Al Qaeda flourish in Iraq, a place they have never been before the invasion. Easy reading with simple language with tons of new info reflecting our lack of knowledge about someone so important.
what a joke!.......2007-09-22
The newest tome of bathroom entertainment. "Entertainment" is what this is. you know when movies are "based on true events"? this book is like that. I don't blame the authors for trying to make a couple of dollars by sensationalize and distort history to their liking. no one can really say their version of history is 100% accurate, but this is almost cartoonish in nature. I just hope some poor person don't actually believes any of this non-sense.
So read this book for fun, but please don't take it seriously, and god forbid please do not bring anything up from this in a discussion with your friends or family who are knowledgeable in Chinese history. You will be laughed right out of the room.
The Black Book...and the Red one... .......2007-09-14
Amidst all the controversy over this book, I can't fault the authors for their claim of Mao's responsibility for 70 million domestic peacetime deaths. That figure is indeed confirmed by the Black Book of Communism, which was written by avowed leftists.
It seems such a short time since it was oh so trendy to be seen carrying around campus a copy of the Chairman's Little Red Book.
Caveats, but well worth the price of admission.......2007-09-13
If nothing else, this book is deeply fascinating. The questions of historical precision are raised in even a rudimentary Google search for reviews, yet this is still a book very much worth your time to read. The authors make it eminently obvious they hold no love for Mao, but partisanship or bias are not synonyms for dishonesty - they simply require the reader to attach qualifications to the conclusions. We would not discard out of hand a biography of Hitler written by an Auschwitz Jew.
Concerns for the precision of her statistics and conclusions are justified, but only to a point. Discrepancies, such as whether or not the Great Leap Forward killed 30 million or 38 million, do potentially indicate scholarly sloppiness, but myopic focus on C&H's precision only validates Stalin's notation that once you kill enough people, they're only numbers. I'm willing to accept they exaggerated their numbers, but frankly, I don't care. I'm more concerned about a lot of people getting killed than about exactly how many it was.
Ultimately, this book asks you to weigh the benefits of Mao's life by exposing his awesome sins. Exaggerated though some numbers might be, and partisan though the arguments are, to dismiss this portrait of Mao on those grounds only encourages history to repeat itself. I don't disagree with the other reviews that this books neglects the "benefits" of Mao's reign, but starting down that road is extremely dangerous. By turning analysis of Mao's reign into a cost-benefit analysis between the lives he killed and the lives he raised from poverty or the advances in issues like women's rights, we only make it easier to repeat these mistakes. I am far more comfortable using Mao's biography as a morality tale that damns him unconditionally than I am with utilitarian calculations, however correct or honest those calculations might be. I appreciate the loss in nuance, historical accuracy, and objectivity, but are we really comfortable with the idea that presiding over the deaths of tens of millions of people is ultimately justified if future generations are lifted from poverty?
This is a book with caveats, no doubt, but also a book that makes one think that if you were given one chance to change the course of history, there might be few better choices than wishing Mao was never born.
Very disapointing.......2007-09-06
Before I started reading this book I had great expectations. I knew nothing about Mao at the time and this book seemed like a good place to start. This was a mistake. To make it short, the author's aim is not to tell the story of Mao, but to break his reputation. According to the author, Mao did not believe in communism, he just happened to join the communist party (although when he did join there were very few members and nothing really worth to take advantage of), he was not a great military commander (the writer explains that in all the battles that Mao won, he won because those that were against him were either spies or idiots, or because he was lucky, or because someone from the communist party did all the work and Mao took credit). The author also tried to tell us that Mao was lucky to acquire the nuclear bomb and he actually miscalculated but as in most cases luck was by his side. The issue that the writer really failed to tackle was that when Mao came to power China was in a terrible mess and no one really ruled it. The Russians and the Japanese attacked when they wished and no one could stop them. By the time Mao died China was one of the strongest countries in the world and was united under a single leadership. Yes Mao was a mass murderer, but that doesnt mean he cant be smart or calculating.
Book Description
Chairman Mao's personal physician and confidant for twenty two years, takes us for the first time into the Chinese dictator's very private world.
Customer Reviews:
This poor poor doctor.......2007-08-24
All the while while reading this book, the only thing I could think about was to feel for this poor poor doctor. Dr. Li was supposedly headed for a great life as a doctor in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, by following his brother's urging, he returned to China to a pretty much "doomed" career. Not only did he not get to pick his hospital job as wanted after returning, but after being summoned to be Mao's personal doctor, his dreams as a neurosurgeon was pretty much over. He was abolished to pretty much treating common colds and maladies, and acting as "nanny" to the Mao family, living in fear throughout the 20 years that he would be blamed for any illness of Mao.
I also felt so much for Dr. Li's wife Lillian whose career was reduced to rudimentary tasks.
Not a global view, but a wonderful sharp focus.......2007-01-18
This is a fascinating examination of one of the most powerful and (arguably) destructive world leaders of the 20th century. For somebody like me with a very basic familiarity of the history of Communist China, this book is a little lacking as a biography. It offers little detail on Mao's background and nothing about his rise to power. It does provide, however, a unique perspective on the Chairman's life between the years of 1954, when Dr. Li became Mao's personal physician, and Mao's death in 1976. It is the first biography I've ever read to so closely examine the head/body connection in terms of how one's politics affect one's health and one's health, one's politics.
The book has a natural bias, since Dr. Li lived with Mao throughout most of this time and was directly involved in many of the events described. He seems to strive for frankness, but a reader might sense that his memories are colored by his own attempts to save face. In some respects, it's more memoir of Li than biography of Mao--though that seems a small point to quibble about, since Mao was such a profound presence and influence in Li's life. Those seeking a detached perspective are advised to look elsewhere; this is a purely personal view.
I found it very rewarding. It humanized Mao to a much greater extent than biographies of political leaders generally do. Li seems to want to do justice to his subject, casting blame where appropriate and giving credit where he believes credit is due. The overall picture it presents of the Chairman is of a man with a sharply manipulative mind, but far more power than he could manage; with a much greater love for himself and his image than for the people he professed to serve. But at the same time, though Li may not intentionally have presented the image, Mao also emerges as a prisoner of the system he helped to emplace and so liberally exploited, particularly as he ages and his heath deteriorates. Hounded by his own superstitions and paranoias, he was ill-served by the sycophants he chose to surround him, but so blinded by his own cult of personality that he could never accept a true friend. This towering and terrifying figure is reduced to a querulous, feeble old man with no recourse to privacy or claim to humanity even in death, where his objectification extended to the point that his doctors were ordered to preserve his bloated corpse for eternal display. Sadly, I can't help but think that the Chairman would have approved.
take a look.......2007-01-06
Fascinating reading but not substaniated with facts. A personal experience point of view which may well be close to the truth.
Also a lesson of survival from Dr. Li.......2006-11-29
This book is not only an entertaining way to learn Chinese modern history as many of the reviewers here pointed out but also an important personal lessons of survival when we have to deal with a difficult boss for example. Borrowing the language from "7 habits of effective people," it is to focus your energy on your circle of influence and not on the circle of concern. In this book there are countless examples of people who did the latter (voiced their concern about the welfare of China as a nation and the common people) and invited misfortune upon themselves almost without exception. Dr. Li taught us that we must be aware of what we can do and never worry about what we cannot do.
If I could recommend only one China book... .......2006-08-27
Dr. Li was the man responsible for Mao's health from 1954 until Mao's death in 1976. He saw a lot. He's honest, eminently readable, and eye-opening. The translation is excellent. A cover blurb by Professor Andrew J. Nathan, Columbia University, calls it, "The most revealing book ever published on Mao, perhaps on any dictator in history." I agree with that. Even though it's almost 700 pages, I enjoyed every word. Long-time subscribers know I prefer to read a book in one sitting instead of two. Dr. Li had me for three, despite my notoriously short attention span. If I could recommend only one China book...
As I've mentioned elsewhere, this book makes me feel like I've been "behind the scenes" during Mao's regime. I almost want to go back and reread all my "China books" and enjoy my new perspective.
Average customer rating:
- The men who Would be King: The Chairman and the Generalissimo
- A nuanced portrait of a complex man.
- Excellent Book...But Missing Some Info
- Beats the Competition
- A fine and comprehensive view of Mao's life and career - quite sympathetic to Mao
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Mao: A Life
Philip Short
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ASIN: 0805066381 |
Amazon.com
Of the three great tyrants of the 20th century--Hitler, Stalin, and Mao--the West generally knows the least about the latter. What we do know is that he was every bit as genocidal in his policies as either of the other two great villains of the age. In fact, in purely statistical terms, Mao might have been responsible for the deaths of more people than Hitler and Stalin combined. However, Philip Short's immense but immensely readable and impressively researched biography of the man goes far deeper than this. Yes, he acknowledges, Mao was a tyrant, but then China always has been run by tyrants; it never has had a tradition of democracy. And Mao was also an idealist: the deaths of millions was, as he saw it, the price that his country had to pay for being dragged from a state of medieval servitude--perpetually on the brink of famine--to that of a modern, industrialized, self-sufficient nation, in the space of a single lifetime. Short also humanizes Mao, and shows a man who had a profound and sincere interest in Chinese philosophy and poetry, and a surprisingly sharp sense of humor. None of this can exonerate Mao from the charge of inhumanity on an epic scale. But it does make for a much more rounded and complex portrait of the figure who, as the 21st century unfolds, might be shown to have had more influence on world history than either Hitler or Stalin. --Christopher Hart, Amazon.co.uk
Book Description
When the Nationalists routed a ragtag Red Army on the Xiang River during the Long March, an earthy Chinese peasant with a brilliant mind moved to a position of power. Eight years after his military success, Mao Tse-tung had won out over more sophisticated rivals to become party chairman, his title for life. Isolated by his eminence, he lived like a feudal emperor for much of his reign after blood purge and agricultural failures took more lives than those killed by either Stalin or Hitler. His virtual quarantine resulted in an ideological/political divide and a devastating reign of terror that became known as the Cultural Revolution. One cannot understand today's China without first understanding Mao, and Philip Short's masterly assessment -- informed by a wealth of new sources -- allows the reader to understand this colossal figure whose shadow will dominate the twenty-first century.
Customer Reviews:
The men who Would be King: The Chairman and the Generalissimo.......2007-01-31
Short, Philip (1999) Mao: A Life (Holt: New York)
Fenby, Jonathan (2003) Chiang Kai-Shek: China's Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost (Carroll & Graf: New York).
On October 1, 1949 Chairman Mao Zedong stood at the Gate of Heavenly Peace and declared the founding of the People's Republic of China. He told the assembled crowd, "We, the 475 million Chinese people have stood up and our future is infinitely bright." He further continued "The Chinese people have stood up." Two months the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) achieved later final victory. The leader of the Kuomintang (KMT), Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, fled with his party to the Chinese provincial island of Taiwan. That day was the endgame of a battle that began twenty-two years earlier during the 1927 Autumn Harvest Uprising in Hunan.
Both Mao and Chiang are synonymous with the history of modern China. Both men came from similar backgrounds, had similar strategies and similar visions for China. Each man came from humble origins - Chiang the son of a salt merchant and Mao the son of a well off peasant. Mao and Chiang also sought to remake China as a modern nation within the world of nation-states. On more than one occasion each man was willing to use the other for their own struggle within their respective parties. To a degree, they were peas in a pod in modern China.
The capturing of these complicated men in their pod has been a complicated process for most writers. Many writers are trapped in their internal politics to capture the true person behind the images. Mao and Chiang both have had devoted followers and devote detractors who were more than willing to take a blind eye to things both good and bad done by these men.
Short and Fenby, however, do not. These two biographies are both extremely objective and sound. Mao is seen as the terrible dictator that he was. "His rule brought about the deaths of more of his own people than any other leader in history." Short admires Mao as being the man "who wrenched China from it medieval torpor and forced it into the contours of a modern nation."
Fenby, meanwhile, is equally objective in his assessment of the Generalissimo. Chiang's regime, both on the Mainland and on Taiwan, was not the thriving democracy it is even though of in the west. But in fact, it was a authoritarian one "organized on Leninist lines with a repressive internal security apparatus." Yet in the wake of three decades of horrid revolution, "Chiang and his era become less of the nightmare painted after the Communist victory."
Without Mao or Chiang China would probably still be the semi-colonial backwater it was when they were born in the late nineteenth century. Both men helped to unmake the old feudalist China ran for the betterment of Qing Dynasty and laid the groundwork for the extreme economic growth both on the Mainland and on Taiwan. Each Short and Fenby attempt to capture these two complicated men who will dominate the pages of history for centuries to come. Each is a fantastic read about the two men who would be king.
A nuanced portrait of a complex man........2006-12-19
Of all the great 20th century dictators, Mao seems the hardest to fathom. This is probably because of the way his mind worked and the peculiarities of his weltenschaung. It would be useless to pin down his psyche with a choice quotation or two. The man who famously said that "power flows out of the barrel of a gun" has also been reported as saying that it is "a mistake to believe that weapons decide everything". Above all -- in Phillip Short's excellent boigraphy -- Mao come across as a man of contradictions. He saw the world in dialectical, yin-yang terms. One feels, almost, that the great turmoils he unleashed were his way of ensuring that the great proletarian revolution remained permanant and forever dialectical and always violent. Stasis would be bad for China.
To those brought up under a western-inspired education system and world-view, Mao seems like a capricious crank, a heartless monster. In Philip Short's treatment, however, Mao displays a preternatural sense of nuance and subtlety of thought, and a finely-honed sense of brinkmanship (as in the Cultural Revolution where he let loose the forces of revolution upon the Party itself).
And what of his legacy ? Short argues that an important distinction needs to be made between Mao and the other dictators: The overwhelming majority of deaths under his rule were the unintended consequence of policies, not the deliberate genocide of a class of people (like the Jews or the Kulaks). Mao's cavalier attitude towards deaths on a massive scale is acknowledged. To Mao, a millions deaths is merely a part of the dialectics of revolution. In this sense he was indeed a monster.
Today China is a capitalist country in all but name. I think Mao would have seen this as a natural state of affairs, given the contradictions inherent in world history.If he were to come back from the grave, he would judge that the time is now ripe for him to unleash another great upheaval. Capitalist stasis is also not good !
Excellent Book...But Missing Some Info.......2006-12-11
This is a superbly written biography of Mao Zedong who I feel should be in any Sinophile's library. The great detail of Mao Zedong's early life and how he got into Communism is excellent. The description of his Anarchist/Marxist philosophy gives a reader a very clear understanding on why Communism came about in China; that it was mostly accepted by the majority of the Chinese population (especially peasants) and not initially enforced upon them, a view held by most Americans. The sad developments of Hundred Flowers Campaign, Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution are also revealed in great detail.
However, no matter how good this book is, I'm still a little bothered by some of it's lack of details on certain very important aspects of modern Chinese history.
1) Not enough was mention about his relationship with Japanese when China was engaged in the war with Japan. Nothing was mentioned on any possible collaboration with Japan that would have upset certain Chinese who claimed that the Communists did more against Japanese than Nationalist.
2) And talking about the Sino Japanese War, why wasn't the big battle of Operation Ichigo mentioned? China would have faced annihilation from Japan during this gigantic operation in 1944, something that worried China greatly and affect the future of the Communists and Nationalists.
3) Not enough about Zhou Enlai was mentioned. Zhou Enlai's proposal of the Four Modernization program was used by Deng Xiaoping to transformed China. I felt this is ultra-important information that should have been mentioned about the 70s. The contrast of Mao Zedong's ultra left views with Zhou's moderate views would have given the reader a great understanding how Deng's program succeeded in the great transformation of modern China from Mao's disastrous programs.
4) Mao Zedong developed some sort of mental illness later in life which caused the strange series of events during the cultural revolution, especially his purge of Liu Shaoqi; this mental illness was possibly caused by drugs (this was mentioned in Harrison Salisbury's "New Emperors" this would have explained his erratic behavior during his old age.
But otherwise this is a truly good book. I am most impressed by Short's ultra unbiased viewpoints.
Anybody who read this book should compare it with the Chiang Kai Shek's biography, " Chiang Kai Shek: China's Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost", by Jonathan Fenby.
Beats the Competition.......2006-12-10
Miles ahead of Chang and Halliday. Don't waste your time on their simple-minded view of history as a contest between black cowboy hats and white ones. Philip Short is a real historian, and this is history at its best.
A fine and comprehensive view of Mao's life and career - quite sympathetic to Mao.......2006-04-28
This is now the standard life of Mao, but for me it was like reading a history of the Cuban Missile Crisis that still talked about how Kennedy stared down Khrushchev without mentioning the secret deal for the U.S. to remove missiles from Turkey. That is, it is sympathetic to the point of touting an official line at the expense of giving us the full story. Still, it is useful to know what the official line is and this is a good life of Mao from his youth through his entire career.
Personally, I consider Mao one of the great killers of the 20th century, but I also know that most Chinese do not see him that way. There are some who see him as a monster for what he did to hundreds of millions of people while he ruled China and for the tens of millions who died because of his policies. Short always has a ready excuse to absolve Mao of direct evil, even while admitting that Mao is indeed responsible. The Chinese I have spoken to who admire Mao do so because of his strength in freeing China from the West and making China into a world power.
China has a history of strong emperors who ruled with an iron fist and under whose rule many people died. Mao was a great student of Chinese history and new how to appeal to its themes and traditions. In the Chinese view, they have plenty of people, and if some die and China becomes strong, so be it. Mao played on this sensibility to the hilt. However, I am not Chinese and am free to judge him according to my lights and for me he was one of the greatest monsters of all time. Anyone who condemns ANY American leader in our history as a killer or a monster and yet praises Mao is a hypocrite beyond the power of the word to convey a strong enough level of hypocrisy. But my view isn't the view of this book or the view of the Chinese and they should have the leaders they want. It is their nation and culture after all. And this book will give you a view of Mao more in line with how he is viewed by the country he helped re-create than the critical books such as "The Unknown Mao" or "The Private Life of Chairman Mao" (which are often attacked by people who support Mao - however, the details of most of the horrible events described do show up in even this biography if you read closely and look past the airbrushing).
The book does read well and will likely lead the unwary into feeling admiration for this man. He certainly was an amazing man and one of great genius. Whether you see him as a hero worthy of veneration or one of the great monsters in history, Mao is certainly an historic figure that one should know. Reading across the spectrum of views is probably the best way to get a more true picture of the man and his career than you will get from either his supporters or his detractors. So, this would be a good candidate for one of the kinder views of Mao that is still authoritative and fairly comprehensive.
Amazon.com
This first authoritative expose of the 1958-1962 famine prompted by China's collectivization plan, "The Great Leap Forward," comes at a time when the cult of Mao is alive and well inside China, and while agents of Chinese influence are able to arrange audiences with a President. Via his painstaking research and reporting that included two treks through interior Chinese provinces, Becker tells how the famine occurred because ill-trained peasants were forced to undertake a gigantic and centralized industrial and agricultural expansion. The new factories, canals, and irrigation systems failed spectacularly, and in contrast to propaganda boasts of having economically outstripped the U.S., when in reality the populace was driven by starvation to cannibalism, slavery, and madness.
Book Description
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Chinese people suffered what may have been the worst famine in history. Over thirty million perished in a grain shortage brought on not by flood, drought, or infestation, but by the insanely irresponsible dictates of Chairman Mao Ze-dong's "Great Leap Forward," an attempt at utopian engineering gone horribly wrong. Journalist Jasper Becker conducted hundreds of interviews and spent years immersed in painstaking detective work to produce Hungry Ghosts, the first full account of this dark chapter in Chinese history. In this horrific story of state-sponsored terror, cannibalism, torture, and murder, China's communist leadership boasted of record harvests and actually increased grain exports, while refusing imports and international assistance. With China's reclamation of Hong Kong now a fait accompli, removing the historical blinders is more timely than ever. As reviewer Richard Bernstein wrote in the New York Times, "Mr. Becker's remarkable book....strikes a heavy blow against willed ignorance of what took place."
Customer Reviews:
Worthwhile.......2006-02-25
I find this book a most fascinating one . . . and a "required" reading for those interested not just in China's history but modern genocide, mass media control by state press, Communist theory development, among many other topics. It is easy to read and gruesome aspects of the famine are dealt with respectfully and with sensitivity.
I give it only four stars (rather than five) because I feel there is, at times, repetition of facts. All in all I highly recommend this book. Every person should read it to better understand and bring to light shameful acts against humanity.
A must read book.......2006-01-24
This book isn't especially well written from a literary perspective. In the reviews below you will find one or two criticisms such as an incomplete understanding of ancient Chinese history, which may well be valid. Unfortunately some people have obviously got hung up on the "30 million" deaths claim, but Becker does little to independently research the size of the death toll. He just summarises the various research that has been carried out, with what looks to me like a fair-minded commentary of the problems of estimating an accurate number.
However this is not the point of the book, which is firstly to gather together evidence that this famine did happen and secondly to piece together the complex strands explaining why it happened.
Ultimate blame is placed at the foot of Mao who firstly was the architect of the radical and in some cases barmy social and agricultural reforms which initiated the famine and secondly put in place a regime of terror which led most non-heroic subordinates to feedback the information they thought he wanted to hear regardless of the reality on the ground. Most of those who dared to tell the truth, ultimately paid with their life, either immediately or a few years later in the Cultural Revolution, which itself is seen by Becker as the way Mao sought to regain control of the party from the more moderate voices who had eventually managed to put in place the reforms to Mao's policies which ended the famine.
To his credit, Becker spends some time discussing the previous famines and periods of war and unrest which provide a backdrop to the situation. He also recognises, though does not emphasis some of Mao's achievements. His overall thesis is I think not, as some seem to suggest, that Mao deliberately and consciously murdered his own people in the way that Stalin did. It's more that Mao though he might have been a master political and military tactician had little understanding of human nature or science and was so drunk on his own propaganda that he refused to see how he could have been mistaken. Becker leaves open the morally important question of the extent to which Mao had deluded himself about the suffering of his people, and the extent to which he believed that such suffering was of little consequence in the greater scheme of things.
Becker also correctly lays considerable blame at the doors of those western commentators, China watchers and academics who were duped by Mao's propaganda - way up until the early 1990s, thus paving the way for a series of disasters around the world as various third world governments from Cambodia to Tanzania tried to emulate the apparent achievements of Mao's China with disastrous policies of their own.
I believe that Becker puts forward a fair minded and highly plausible analysis of what happened during this period, and given its importance not only from a moral perspective but in understanding the history of China and the world during the subsequent 50 years, it's a book that as many people as possible should be encouraged to carefully and open mindedly read.
More excellent information here..!.......2005-08-23
After reading this book, I also went to this website http://www.theepochtimes.com/jiuping.asp and read its articles entitled, "Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party". The information is very in-depth and goes steps further in exposing the CCP during its bloody rise to power and its current efforts to maintain absolute control. I would highly recommend checking it out.. All the materials are FREE and they even have free audio book format mp3's
World's best kept Communist tragedy .......2004-10-03
The tragedy of the massive famine that devoured untold numbers of lives in China during the 1959 - 1961 "Great Leap Forward" campaign was that the official stand of the Chinese Communist Party refused to acknowledge it as a man-made mistake.
This book acts like Spielberg's "Shoah Foundation", it's a testament to a fatalistic catastrophe of biblical proportions. It contains testimonies of survivors which the author had interviewed. Simple as it may seem, but some of the testimonies are indeed moving, touching and shows how hunger can reveal the bestial and the monstrosity of what a human being is capable of.
The greatest peacetime disaster of the 20th century.......2003-12-26
-----------------------------------------------------------
A horrifying and well-researched history of how Mao's "Great
Leap Forward" became the worst famine in history, killing
perhaps 30 million Chinese (1958 - 1960) -- it appears
unlikely an exact fatality figure will ever be known. Which
adds to the horror, I think, that millions of people, with hopes
and dreams like our own, could vanish without leaving
a trace, even a number, in the world outside their homes.
Not to mention uncounted millions of children whose lives
were blighted by brain-damage from malnutrition....
FWIW, Jasper concludes that Mao's Great Famine was more
omission than commission (in contrast to Stalin's): Mao's
absurd ideas of backyard industrialization, plus turning
loose the Red Guards chaos, ruined the harvests. Then
Communist Party officials simply denied the problem, and
concocted elaborate coverups -- even painting the tree
trunks to hide that the bark had been eaten by starving
people -- when Mao or senior officials were to visit famine
areas. And a smiling-peasants "Big Lie" for foreigners,
which worked for years.
It's a remarkable, and depressing, account. Highly recommended.
review copyright 1999 by Peter D. Tillman
Book Description
In this dazzling new series, philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Zizek interrogates key writings on revolution.
These early philosophical writings underpinned the Chinese revolutions and their clarion calls to insurrection remain some of the most stirring of all time. Drawing on a dizzying array of references from contemporary culture and politics, Zizek's firecracker commentary reaches unsettling conclusions about the place of Mao's thought in the revolutionary canon.
"Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer, which we use to crush the enemy."—Mao Zedong
Book Description
Whether one views Mao Zedong as a hero or a demon, the "Great Helmsman" was undoubtedly a pivotal figure in the history of 20th-century China. The first part of this volume is an introductory essay that traces the history of 20th-century China, from Mao's early career up to the Chinese Communist Party's victory in 1949, through three decades of revolution, to Mao's death I 1976. The second half offers a selection of Mao's writings-including such seminal pieces as "On the New Democracy" and selections from the "Little Red Book"-and writings about Mao and his legacy by both his contemporaries and modern scholars. Also included are headnotes, a chronology, Questions for Consideration, photographs, a selected bibliography, and index.
Customer Reviews:
Mao Zedong and China's Revolutions - Review.......2007-05-17
I enjoyed this book as required reading for a World Civilizations class in college. THe approach is much different than that of traditional texts; it provides the student with the original documents, enabling the student to do the work of an historian. In putting together the facts and analyzing them logically, this is a great excercise in critical thinking and a great way to "get inside Mao's head".
Enjoy!
A Very Illuminating Collection.......2007-02-13
The bulk of this book consists of primary documents from the hand of Mao Zedong. These documents provide the reader with a good understanding of the outlook that Mao employed, and how that outlook evolved over time. Additionally, this book contains a good selection of secondary documents that focus categorically on the good and bad consequences of Mao's leadership as well as the variety of ways in which people have perceived and continue to perceive Mao as a leader.
The introduction to this volume is probably its strongest feature. Timothy Cheek gives an incredibly good run-down of Mao's influence on Chinese history, and he does so in a little more than 30 pages. Cheek roughly covers the years 1915-present, and does so in a way that both the new and more experienced students of Chinese history have something to learn. I really felt the Cheek did a masterful job of combining richness of substance with concise writing. The introduction to this book should probably be included in the syllabus for any modern Chinese history course.
One more note: Cheek's analysis of Mao himself was very even-handed; not too supportive and yet not to critical. His basic thesis in this regard is that Mao started out as a very pragmatic leader who played a big role in restoring China through unification, but then Mao became detached from his party, the people, and reality. This thesis seems solid, and provides a reasonable, disinterested basis for reflecting on Mao as an historical actor.
Good to Read Before a Trip to China.......2002-11-07
A friend recommended this book to me for introducing me to the history of modern China, as background for my first trip to China. I found it really helpful to get a good introduction to modern Chinese history and culture. As a result, I certainly got more cultural enrichment and insight out of my trip. So I am passing this recommendation along to others. Mao is fascinating and China is a great country to visit.
Amazon.com
From humble beginnings in rural Hunan, Mao Zedong became the "Great Helmsman" of Communist China. By the time he died in 1976, he had profoundly changed the course of history. His increasingly erratic whims and graspings at a wild utopia destabilized his immense achievements, and he was ultimately responsible for the deaths of perhaps 60 million people. Jonathan Spence brings great erudition to the story of this flawed colossus. He is particularly enlightening on Mao's early years--it is nearly two-thirds through the book before Mao stands on the walls of the Forbidden City in October 1949 and declares the establishment of the People's Republic of China. The young revolutionary's infamous willfulness is soon apparent, yet Spence rounds out his character by, for example, quoting a poem to his beloved first wife and mentioning the profit he made from an early capitalist venture, a bookstore. Mao Zedong is excellent biography--and more. China was convulsed for nearly a century by almost constant war and revolution, and Spence uses the life of the man at the heart of so many historic events to elucidate the whole momentous epoch. In his many writings, Spence has proved a master at making complex themes easy to understand, and this compact book provides yet another example of his skills. --John Stevenson
Book Description
An intimate history of one of the most formidable and elusive rulers in modern history
From humble origins in the provinces, Mao Zedong rose to absolute power, unifying with an iron fist a vast country torn apart by years of weak leadership, colonialism, and war. This sharply drawn and insightful account brings to life this modern-day emperor and the tumultuous era that he did so much to shape.
Customer Reviews:
A concise biography for the beginner.......2007-02-22
Jonathan Spence is probably the leading Western scholar on Chinese history, and for that reason alone this book is worth reading. Spence provides the reader with a concise overview of Mao's life with an appropriate amount of commentary on issues that help the reader understand Mao's personality. This focus on Mao as a person (instead of Mao as an historical actor) is, in my opinion, the book's strongest feature.
I'd like to spend a second or two dealing with what some of the other reviewers of this book have said, because I think several of them have missed the mark. Some people seem to be disquieted because Spence spends so little time covering the historical aspects of major events, such as the Long March, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. However, the point of this book is not to give a detailed account of Mao's role in modern Chinese history, but rather to provide an image of Mao that readers can get their hands around. Spence accomplishes this task nicely, and reviewers misunderstand his purpose when they criticize this book for its lack of coverage of such important events.
Another set of reviewers are disillusioned with the book because they feel it does not adequately show how Mao went from a middle-peasantry childhood to become the leader of China. I don't know what these reviewers think the book is missing in particular; I think Spence does a good job of capturing the essence of Mao's life through time, and Spence stops at each categorical change in Mao's life to explain what was going on that led to Mao's upward shift in stature.
I give this book three stars because I think it is a book without a definable demographic in terms of readership. The content is too surface-level to be of much use to even the moderately informed Chinese history student. At the same time, Spence's sense of irony and paradox will probably be lost on the novice reader because of a lack of contextual understanding. Additionally, Spence leaves unexplained things that not all readers will understand (such as the role of various political bodies that get brought up). So it is that, in my opinion, this book is at times too advanced for the novice, and yet generally too introductory for the more experienced.
I myself didn't learn a whole lot about Mao's life that I didn't already know. Spence's scholarship is very good, however, and there were a decent amount of details that I didn't know beforehand which I found interesting. Spence is very even-handed in terms of moral judgement, which is an important distinction between this book and others that present Mao as either a Saint/Savior or an Antichrist. As a concise biography I think Spence accomplished the worthy task of providing an image of Mao that readers can understand, and on that basis I would recommend this book to people looking to get a better feel for Mao the person.
Good introduction to Mao's life.......2005-04-03
As leader of China for over a quarter of a century, Mao Zedong is one of the dominant figures of modern history, one whose shadow continues to fall on his country today. In this book, Jonathan Spence offers a short introduction to the Chinese leader's life and times, one that seeks to explain how the son of Hunan farmers became the ruler of the most populous country in the world.
That Spence succeeds is a tribute to his command of the subject. He concentrates on Mao's intellectual development, analyzing his writings in order to shed light upon the key points in his life. Spence sees Mao's organizational skills as key to his rise within the Communist Party during the hard years of the 1920s and 1930s. Once in power, Mao consolidated his rule behind an image of himself as the simple, determined leader of a revolutionary movement, an image he sought to impose on the movement as a whole. Yet his increasingly absolute position fueled a self-absorption that, once in power, contributed to the great disasters of his rule.
One of the leading historians of China, Spence presents the details of Mao's life with confidence and erudition. While much of the treatment is perfunctory (what else is to be expected in a biography of less than 200 pages?), within the space available he provides a good overview of Mao's life intertwined with coverage of the complex and dramatic history of twentieth century China. For readers seeking to learn about the interesting times which Mao shaped, this is a good place to start.
Elegant, concise overview of Mao.......2005-03-26
"The American moon and the Chinese moon are the same moon" noted Mao - the American moon was not BETTER. This is my first book on Mao and the way in which Mr Spence underpins this brief overview of Mao's life with examples of Mao's poetry and philosophy adds to understanding of this hugely significant figure in the World's history. The descent into senility (for want of a better term} and the confirmation once again of the dictum power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, are sad perhaps even tragic conclusions to what began as a noble inspirational life. An enjoyable, informative and concise read.
Lacked focus on importance.......2004-01-28
If you going to attempt a 180 page biography of someone of this stature, one must sift thru and present only the most relevent and important details. This did not happen. A decent book, but lacked details on some very important areas, while giving too much time to unrealted topics. Example: Mao becomes the head of a small, isolated band of communist guerilla fighters. Very well, now how does he transform from that, into the head of state for a billion people? the book doesnt say. In this biogarphy, Mao goes from that cave-living nobody into meeting Stalin and ruling China in about 2 paragraphs. From cave-dweller to world leader in 6 sentences. We get more than 6 sentences about his last secretary's personal life.
Perfect intoduction for the curious.......2003-08-14
Only about two hundred pages, Jonathan Spence does a very noble job summarizing one of the most powerful, mysterious, fascinating, and frightening persons of the twentieth century. Though if one is looking for a book that goes into detail about any aspect of Mao's life or policies, it is best to look elsewhere. This book is a straightforward and unabashed introduction and quick overview of Mao's life and work and ideas. Perfect for people curious about Mao and twentieth century China who want to read more than an abstract, but do not necessarily need or want to tackle a big and detailed work. Just the facts and little commentary. Spence does a good job balancing any bias against or for Mao and his policies and deals mostly with the reasons for them and overall consequences.
Average customer rating:
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Quotations from Chairman Mao Tsetung
Zedong Mao
Manufacturer: Foreign Languages Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
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Customer Reviews:
Answer me this please..........2005-02-12
If this is the 2nd most publicated book in the world, and it's no longer mandatory reading material, why can't I find a good copy for a buck or two?
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Q: From idea to finished book, how long did Mao: The Unknown Story take to research and write?
