Mao: A Life by Philip Short - January 2000

New York: Henry Holt / John Macrae, January 2000. Hardcover. First American Edition (stated) / full number line. Fine book in a Fine jacket. Slight rubbing to jacket, otherwise pristine inside and out. Not from a library. No remainder mark. Not clipped. xvi + 782. 24 pages b&w photos, 4 maps.


The definitive biography of the man who dominated modern Chinese history. 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 a blood purge 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 the Cultural Revolution. Though Mao broke the shackles of two thousand years of Confucian right thinking and was the major force of contemporary China, he reverted to the simplistic thinking of his peasant origins, sustained by the same autocratic process that supported China's first emperors.