Mao

"a biographical sketch packed with politics and insights, ...a 'must' for any student of Chinese history."
-- Midwest Book Review

Buy online from Amazon UK.
Buy online from Amazon US.
Buy in Spanish from Ediciones Tutor.

Born in relative poverty in an obscure part of China, Mao Zedong somehow went from being a farmer's son, to revolutionary leader, a general in World War Two, and the ruler of the world's most populous nation. He is one of the most important figures in the history of the twentieth century, alternated glorified and demonised, not only in the Western world, but in the China that he once ruled. His influence persists to this day, as history repeats itself the Tiananmen Square Massacre was an attempt by the student generation to revisit his grass-roots revolution, and by the government generation to reprise his purges of dissidents.

Nothing is certain with Mao. Facts can be twisted, garbled and revised, not only by his enemies and propagandists, but also by Mao himself. Stories he told foreign journalists in the 1930s, repeated for decades by dutiful biographers, have been found to be apocryphal or inaccurate, others selectively edited. Youthful writings read by virtually no one have been later reprinted in mass-market editions; their relevance to their original time of publication blown all out of proportion. Even after his death, Mao periodically falls in and out of fashion.

This concise biography examines Mao as a product of his times, showing the many influences that pushed him down the path of rebellion and Communism, and the many events that propelled him to the leadership of the People's Republic of China.