Lives: Mao - Hardcover

Spence, Jonathan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0297643479 ISBN 13: 9780297643470

Publisher: W&N, 1999

Synopsis

In this dazzling blend of history, literature and politics, the world¿s pre-eminent historian of China, gets to the heart of the complex personality of Chairman Mao Zedong. Steeped in Chinese politics and culture, Spence penetrates Mao's rhetoric and infamous self-will to distil an intimate portrait of a man as withdrawn and mysterious as the emperors he disdained. How did this farm boy from the remote Hunan province, with a haphazard education and unexceptional talents, evolve from a rebel youth cutting off his braided queue and refusing the 'legalized rape' of a bourgeois marriage to the Iron hand that devastated millions for so long? Spence masterfully illuminates a man who, at a watershed moment in history, turned the classic Chinese concept of reform through reversal into an endless adventure in upheaval and examines why he is still remembered with hate, awe and even reverence.

About this title

Review:

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 destabilised 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 collossus. 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 wilfulness 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 bookshop. Mao Zedong is an 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:

One of the most formidable and elusive rulers of modern times, by a world renowned historian.

About this edition

• Publisher: W&N
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0297643479
• ISBN 13: 9780297643470
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 205