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Mao

The Unknown Story

by Jung Chang ; Jon Halliday

ISBN: 0679422714
ISBN-13: 9780679422716
Format: Hardcover

Summary

In this highly critical biography of China's late premier, husband-and-wife team Jung Chang (who grew up under Mao's rule, and wrote about it in WILD SWANS) and Jon Halliday rank Mao with Hitler and Stalin as one of the 20th century's dictators. Destroying the picture of Mao as a strong but benevolent leader of the people, Chang and Halliday chronicle his rise to power and his long domination of his country through terror. By their count, Mao was responsible for the death of 70 million Chinese. Based on extensive research and interviews with many who served with Mao, the authors present a corrective to the many representations of "Chairman Mao" as either a giant, a visionary, a philosopher of revolutions, a tenacious uniter of his people, a survivor, or the author of the charming "little red book." In this comprehensive biography, Chang and Halliday present new historical documentation of Mao's programs-the Long March, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution-along with his many purges. Their final verdict is that Mao was a power-hungry and ruthless man. A New York Times Notable Book of the Year for 2005.

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Media Reviews

"Based on a decade of meticulous interviews and archival research, this magnificent biography methodically demolishes every pillar of Mao's claim to sympathy or legitimacy. [T]his is a magisterial work. True, much of Mao's brutality has already emerged over the years, but this biography supplies substantial new information and presents it all in a stylish way that will put it on bedside tables around the world."    -- Nicholas D. Kristof

   -- New York Times Book Review

"[A]n entertaining and, for the big picture, an ultimately informative book about a figure ever ready for examination."    -- Adi Ignatius

   -- Time

"[MAO] is the most exhaustive analysis of its subject yet written....The story brought together by Chang and Halliday is so shocking that reading it literally takes your breath away....If any single book in our time has the capacity to change the course of history, this is it."    -- Keith Windschuttle

   -- New Criterion

"MAO: THE UNKNOWN STORY is no ordinary book. Reaching for comparisons, one looks inescapably to Alexander Solzhenitsyn's GULAG ARCHIPELAGO....Like Solzhenitsyn's GULAG ARCHIPELAGO, it delivers a death blow to an entire way of thinking."    -- Arthur Waldron

   -- Commentary

Bibliographic Details

Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc
Published date: 2005
Edition: 1th edition
Size: 6.75 x 9.5 inches
Weight: 2.75 pounds
Pages: 814

Publisher's Notes

A gripping portrait of the late Chinese leader provides hitherto unavailable details about the life of Mao Tse-tung, exploding a wide variety of myths about Mao, including facts about the Long March, his relationship with Stalin, his ruthless campaign of getting his own way, his monstrous behavior toward those close to him, and the devastating impact of his thirst for power on the Chinese people. 75,000 first printing.

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Mao: The Unknown Story

Chang, Jung; Halliday, Jon

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Mao