This "comprehensive, judicious, and finely detailed" (Roderick MacFarquhar, The New York Review of Books) biography of Mao Zedong traces how he created a totalitarian government even more destructive and extreme than Stalin's, while transforming China from an impoverished nation to a leading world power.
Mao Zedong was one of the most important figures of the twentieth century, the most important in the history of modern China. A complex figure, he was both a champion of the poor and a brutal tyrant, a poet and a despot. In this major new biography, the authors draw upon extensive Russian documents previously unavailable to reveal surprising details about Mao's rise to power, his leadership in China, and the true nature of his relationship with Stalin.
Mao brought his country from poverty and economic backwardness into the modern age and onto the world stage. But he was also responsible for an unprecedented loss of life during the disastrous Great Leap Forward andthe bloody Cultural Revolution. He lived and behaved as China's last emperor.
Mao is the full story of Mao's life and rule told as never before.
Mao Zedong was one of the most important figures of the twentieth century, the most important in the history of modern China. A complex figure, he was both a champion of the poor and a brutal tyrant, a poet and a despot. In this major new biography, the authors draw upon extensive Russian documents previously unavailable to reveal surprising details about Mao's rise to power, his leadership in China, and the true nature of his relationship with Stalin.
Mao brought his country from poverty and economic backwardness into the modern age and onto the world stage. But he was also responsible for an unprecedented loss of life during the disastrous Great Leap Forward andthe bloody Cultural Revolution. He lived and behaved as China's last emperor.
Mao is the full story of Mao's life and rule told as never before.
"Mao's will for power, his vision as a revolutionary, and his prodigious capacity for cruelty marked mankind. Yet it is impossible to understand the transformation of modern China without absorbing the enormity of one man's impact. Pantsov and Levine have opened what are perhaps the final vaults of archival treasures to buttress their new and engrossing portrait of the Chinese revolutionary titan. With clear narrative and sparkling anecdote, they have chiseled a more complete Mao, in the full dimension of life as a man, as an eager collaborator with Stalin in the Communist bloc and as the tiger on the mountain who both built and ravaged a nation." Patrick Tyler, former Beijing Bureau Chief of The New York Times and author of A Great Wall: Six Presidents and China