Book Description
The most authoritative life of the Chinese leader every written, Mao: The Unknown Story is based on a decade of research, and on interviews with many of Mao’s close circle in China who have never talked before — and with virtually everyone outside China who had significant dealings with him. It is full of startling revelations, exploding the myth of the Long March, and showing a completely unknown Mao: he was not driven by idealism or ideology; his intimate and intricate relationship with Stalin went back to the 1920s, ultimately bringing him to power; he welcomed Japanese occupation of much of China; and he schemed, poisoned, and blackmailed to get his way. After Mao conquered China in 1949, his secret goal was to dominate the world. In chasing this dream he caused the deaths of 38 million people in the greatest famine in history. In all, well over 70 million Chinese perished under Mao’s rule — in peacetime.
Customer Reviews:
Evil Mao.......2007-09-24
Very well researched book. Gives you an overlook on the real Mao and how the rest of the world misinterpreted him. Shows how America was superficial in assessing how the real Mao would be and how it applied pressure on Chiang Kai Shek to enforce cease fire on Mao's critical turning point of the civil war thus making it possible for Mao to conquer China. Mao killed his colleagues and his enemies alike for the sole purpose of gaining and retaining power. All means were legitimate in his eyes to achieve that goal. It looks like we never learn from these mistakes. This attitude makes us helping the Taliban to be a prominent force and Al Qaeda flourish in Iraq, a place they have never been before the invasion. Easy reading with simple language with tons of new info reflecting our lack of knowledge about someone so important.
what a joke!.......2007-09-22
The newest tome of bathroom entertainment. "Entertainment" is what this is. you know when movies are "based on true events"? this book is like that. I don't blame the authors for trying to make a couple of dollars by sensationalize and distort history to their liking. no one can really say their version of history is 100% accurate, but this is almost cartoonish in nature. I just hope some poor person don't actually believes any of this non-sense.
So read this book for fun, but please don't take it seriously, and god forbid please do not bring anything up from this in a discussion with your friends or family who are knowledgeable in Chinese history. You will be laughed right out of the room.
The Black Book...and the Red one... .......2007-09-14
Amidst all the controversy over this book, I can't fault the authors for their claim of Mao's responsibility for 70 million domestic peacetime deaths. That figure is indeed confirmed by the Black Book of Communism, which was written by avowed leftists.
It seems such a short time since it was oh so trendy to be seen carrying around campus a copy of the Chairman's Little Red Book.
Caveats, but well worth the price of admission.......2007-09-13
If nothing else, this book is deeply fascinating. The questions of historical precision are raised in even a rudimentary Google search for reviews, yet this is still a book very much worth your time to read. The authors make it eminently obvious they hold no love for Mao, but partisanship or bias are not synonyms for dishonesty - they simply require the reader to attach qualifications to the conclusions. We would not discard out of hand a biography of Hitler written by an Auschwitz Jew.
Concerns for the precision of her statistics and conclusions are justified, but only to a point. Discrepancies, such as whether or not the Great Leap Forward killed 30 million or 38 million, do potentially indicate scholarly sloppiness, but myopic focus on C&H's precision only validates Stalin's notation that once you kill enough people, they're only numbers. I'm willing to accept they exaggerated their numbers, but frankly, I don't care. I'm more concerned about a lot of people getting killed than about exactly how many it was.
Ultimately, this book asks you to weigh the benefits of Mao's life by exposing his awesome sins. Exaggerated though some numbers might be, and partisan though the arguments are, to dismiss this portrait of Mao on those grounds only encourages history to repeat itself. I don't disagree with the other reviews that this books neglects the "benefits" of Mao's reign, but starting down that road is extremely dangerous. By turning analysis of Mao's reign into a cost-benefit analysis between the lives he killed and the lives he raised from poverty or the advances in issues like women's rights, we only make it easier to repeat these mistakes. I am far more comfortable using Mao's biography as a morality tale that damns him unconditionally than I am with utilitarian calculations, however correct or honest those calculations might be. I appreciate the loss in nuance, historical accuracy, and objectivity, but are we really comfortable with the idea that presiding over the deaths of tens of millions of people is ultimately justified if future generations are lifted from poverty?
This is a book with caveats, no doubt, but also a book that makes one think that if you were given one chance to change the course of history, there might be few better choices than wishing Mao was never born.
Very disapointing.......2007-09-06
Before I started reading this book I had great expectations. I knew nothing about Mao at the time and this book seemed like a good place to start. This was a mistake. To make it short, the author's aim is not to tell the story of Mao, but to break his reputation. According to the author, Mao did not believe in communism, he just happened to join the communist party (although when he did join there were very few members and nothing really worth to take advantage of), he was not a great military commander (the writer explains that in all the battles that Mao won, he won because those that were against him were either spies or idiots, or because he was lucky, or because someone from the communist party did all the work and Mao took credit). The author also tried to tell us that Mao was lucky to acquire the nuclear bomb and he actually miscalculated but as in most cases luck was by his side. The issue that the writer really failed to tackle was that when Mao came to power China was in a terrible mess and no one really ruled it. The Russians and the Japanese attacked when they wished and no one could stop them. By the time Mao died China was one of the strongest countries in the world and was united under a single leadership. Yes Mao was a mass murderer, but that doesnt mean he cant be smart or calculating.
Book Description
The Cultural Revolution was a watershed event in the history of the People's Republic of China, the defining decade of half a century of communist rule. Before 1966, China was a typical communist state, with a command economy and a powerful party able to keep the population under control. But during the Cultural Revolution, in a move unprecedented in any communist country, Mao unleashed the Red Guards against the party. Tens of thousands of officials were humiliated, tortured, and even killed. Order had to be restored by the military, whose methods were often equally brutal.
In a masterly book, Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals explain why Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, and show his Machiavellian role in masterminding it (which Chinese publications conceal). In often horrifying detail, they document the Hobbesian state that ensued. The movement veered out of control and terror paralyzed the country. Power struggles raged among Lin Biao, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Qing--Mao's wife and leader of the Gang of Four--while Mao often played one against the other.
After Mao's death, in reaction to the killing and the chaos, Deng Xiaoping led China into a reform era in which capitalism flourishes and the party has lost its former authority. In its invaluable critical analysis of Chairman Mao and its brilliant portrait of a culture in turmoil, Mao's Last Revolution offers the most authoritative and compelling account to date of this seminal event in the history of China.
Customer Reviews:
Very Good.......2007-09-08
This fine book is a narrative and analysis of the disastrous Cultural Revolution. The authors are recognized experts on modern Chinese history and this book synthesizes their own primary research and a large volume of secondary research, drawing on both Western and Chinese sources. A major focus is the complex politics at the apex of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Macfarquhar and Schoenhals do a good job of integrating information about provincial politics and the general social impact of the Cultural Revolution. More detail about the social consequences of the Cultural Revolution would have been helpful but this is probably limited by sources.
The central figure of this book, not surprisingly, is Mao Zedong and his central role is a part of the reason much of the book focuses on the higher politics of the Cultural Revolution. Though the Cultural Revolution unleashed latent, destructive forces within China, Mao set the Cultural Revolution in motion and sustained it for years. The authors describe Mao accurately as one of the great tyrants of the 20th century and the text shows his incredible egoism very clearly. Mao clearly set out to produce a state of chaos in China. Why? Mao definitely believed in some idea of a perpetual revolution and mass mobilization. More important, however, seems to have been his insecurity about his paramount position. In the aftermath of the catastrophic Great Leap Forward and seeing the example of the deposition of Krushchev in the Soviet Union, Mao was concerned that there was a risk of no longer being the Supreme leader. Mao initiated the Cultural Revolution by destroying important centers of independent leadership within the CCP and decapitating the military leadership. These moves were followed by mass mobilizations that essentially destroyed the existing formal governmental structures and party discipline. In this chaos, Mao's position and authority as the central arbiter were enhanced greatly. Stalin used similar tactics in the great Purges of the 30s. Recurrent purges and contrived crises produced states of virtual civil war in many parts of China, enormous economic disruption, and caused hundreds of thousands of deaths.
The Cultural Revolution ended only with Mao's death and the re-emergence of more pragmatic leadership. The authors are very good at depicting many of the major actors. The charismatic Zhou Enlai emerges as a profoundly ambiguous figure. A pragmatic leader who tried hard to govern China in the Cultural Revolution, he also displayed slavish devotion to Mao. This book is written well and authors display a nice eye for telling detail. Who would have thought that On The Road was popular among the Red Guards or that Mao's ruthless henchman Kang Sheng was known for the elegance of his calligraphy. Most revealing of all, Mao enjoyed being compared with Qin Shi Huangdi, the tyrannical first emperor of China.
This is also an unusually well produced book. There are some thoughtful features that enhance readability. The authors provide a nice list of the many acronyms describing important organizations in China and a glossary of important figures during the Cultural Revolution.
When China Went Mad.......2007-08-08
An excellent history of the period when the world's most populous nation went insane under the orders and behest of Mao Zedong.
This excellent volume distills Roderick MacFarquhar's three-volume "The Origins of the Cultural Revolution," and Michael Schoenhal's "China's Cultural Revolution, 1966-1969: Not a Dinner Party (East Gate Reader)."
Eminently readable, carefully footnoted, this volume serves as an excellent resource for familiarizing oneself with an event that continues to cast a shadow over modern-day China. Many of China's current leaders grew up in the midst of this chaos. China's industry and technical establishments remain relatively backward because of the ten-year interruption imposed by the Cultural Revolution. And Chinese of that generation fear instability due, in no small part, to the disruptions that the Revolution engendered in their lives.
At last the truth .......2007-04-11
At the time the Cultural Revolution(GPCR) was thought to have resulted from Mao being moved out of power. It was his attempt to destroy the existing elite and to take back the reigns. However now the judgment is in. Mao was never out of power the GPCR was simply an act of pure insanity which resulted in countless deaths, the loss of a years production and the destruction of countless archeological treasures. The aim was some notion in the mind of Mao that China might drift into revisionism. For that reason it was necessary to create a situation of civil war in which students closed the universities and large cities drifted into orchestrated civil wars.
In the end the result was that the GPCR and Great Leap forward were such acts of lunacy that communism was totally discredited as an ideology or a value system in China. Whilst the Communist Party continues to hold power it is totally pragmatic in its approach to economics and China has evolved into a dynamic market economy. Not only is China a market economy but the years of disruption have led to a morality of total materialism. The end result is that the "cultural revolution" led to the discrediting for ever of the ideas that Mao held sacred.
The book is a bit chaotic as it charges a chaotic event. Yet one sees for the first time the reality and enormity of Mao's appalling policies and misrule. Even recent biographies perhaps over rationalize a man who was not only ruthless but clearly deluded.
Mao Zedong: master Machiavellian, mad Marxian.......2007-02-18
Mao Zedong, a utopian Marxist philosopher, who was Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, was appalled at Khrushchev's post-Stalinist "revisionism". But he was furthermore alarmed when the Soviet central party apparatus deposed Khrushchev. Feeling threatened, Mao reacted against his own strong centralized party.
Unlike Stalin who in the 1930's merely purged the old Bolsheviks from the upper ranks of the Soviet Communist Party, Mao set out to destroy the Chinese central party apparatus itself with his "great disorder under heaven", as he called his Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution. Mao fully expected that a new party would spontaneously emerge from the induced violent social chaos.
But the chaos was so great that officers of the People's Liberation Army under Lin Biao ended up taking most of the positions in the emergent party apparatus. This controlling role of the army also alarmed Mao.
When Mao signaled that Lin would soon be purged, Lin Liguo, Lin Biao's son and senior army officer, hatched a conspiracy to assassinate Mao. The attempt was never carried out, but the conspiracy was discovered. Lin Liguo wrote the following description of Mao contained in a document later uncovered:
"Today he uses this force to attack that force; tomorrow he uses that force to attack this force. Today he uses sweet words and honeyed talk to those whom he entices, and tomorrow he puts them to death for some fabricated crimes. Those who are his guests today will be his prisoners tomorrow.
"Looking back at the history of the past few decades, [do you see] anyone whom he has supported initially who has not finally been handed a political death sentence?
"Is there a single political force which has been able to work with him from beginning to end? His former secretaries have either committed suicide or been arrested. His few close comrades-in-arms or trusted aids have also been sent to prison by him....
"He is a paranoid and a sadist. His philosophy of liquidating people is either don't do it, or do it thoroughly. Every time he liquidates someone, he will put them to death before he desists; once he hurts you, he will hurt you all the way, and puts the blame for all bad things on others." (P. 334)
Chairman Mao's Great Revolution was more damaging to China than Chairman Mellon's Great Depression was to America. Both produced reversing reactions from their respective extremes: The reaction to the Cultural Revolution was less intervention in the Chinese economy - the revisionist "capitalist road". The reaction to the Great Depression was more intervention in the American economy - Keynesian fiscal policy.
This book is probably one of the best chronologies of the Cultural Revolution period in China, until the Chinese Communist Party archives are opened, as occurred after the fall of the party in Russia.
Thomas J. Hickey
very readable.......2007-02-12
Written in an "academic" style, but not dry or dense, at all. Some of the stories told are even funny, in a grotesque sort of way (such as the poor soul not being allowed into the stadium for his own "self criticism" because he didn't have a ticket).
Also, in at least one place the authors guess when there is no need to (they state that Washington "seemed" to have missed the implication of Edgar Snow's picture with Mao in the 'People's Daily' when, in fact, Kissinger states up front in 'White House Years' that there was no "seeming" about it--Kissinger admits they "missed the point" completely).
The book should be read in conjunction with the recent Chang-Halliday bio, 'Mao, the Unknown Story'. Both are worthwhile, but both go about their tasks a bit differently, and come to some different, but some similar conclusions. I gave it 4 stars, but it might be 5. You will not regret the purchase, probably.
Average customer rating:
- An excellent read that is written with great talent.
- Great historical memoir
- A great story
- Life across different worlds
- Eric Langager in his review says it best.
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Mao's Last Dancer
Li Cunxin
Manufacturer: Berkley Trade
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Mao's Last Dancer
ASIN: 0425201333 |
Book Description
From a desperately poor village in northeast China, at age eleven, Li Cunxin was chosen by Madame Mao's cultural delegates to be taken from his rural home and brought to Beijing, where he would study ballet. In 1979, the young dancer arrived in Texas as part of a cultural exchange, only to fall in love with America-and with an American woman. Two years later, through a series of events worthy of the most exciting cloak-and-dagger fiction, he defected to the United States, where he quickly became known as one of the greatest ballet dancers in the world. This is his story, told in his own inimitable voice.
Customer Reviews:
An excellent read that is written with great talent........2007-10-09
I just finished this book today and it seemed like moments!
Taking us from the traditional and superstitious marriage of his mother and father, the unimaginable poverty and oppression of China under Mao's communist rule, the one in a billion break to be a participant of Mrs. Mao's dance school, the extreme discipline of that school, defection to America, rejection by his country, and finally to the reuniting with his family; Li tells his life story in a colorful, sometimes humorous way that will make us appreciate the great riches and freedoms we take for granted.
Descriptive, thought provoking, and extremely impacting, "Mao's Last Dancer" most certainly will not be a disappointment.
Great historical memoir.......2007-05-12
I am really enjoying this book, only have a few pages left. The glimpse into third world China from an entirely new perspective, those of the eyes of a young boy during Mao's regime who overcomes incredible odds as a dancer, is
inspiring. A little slow but well written and thoroughly enjoyable.
A great story.......2007-03-05
I found that the first part of the book seemed endlessly depressing, the poverty and constant lack of food and near starvation was so overwhelming. But it was such an eye opener and I learnt much about a subject that I knew little about and it made me want to learn more.
I thought that his personal presistence, drive and ambition was truly inspiring and an insight into the hard work and what it takes to be amoung the best in world, which I am sure is true in any sphere.
His experience of living in the west and his decision to defect seemed in someways quite selfish but so understandable, but as an artist he had an overwhelming desire to be free to express himself which I think was as much to do with his decision as the desire to live a 'western' way of life. He was after all left almost friendless and without his family, I don't think he would have necessarily defected had he not wanted to dance and be the best in the world.
After the early part of the book and the hardship he and his family had suffered it was a lovely feel-good warm ending and he well deserves all his success.
It is not a greatly written book, but it is a really great story and a good read.
Life across different worlds.......2007-02-26
Li Cunxin has had a somewhat different life. He was almost doomed to obscurity like the vast majority of people in this world, living the life of a poor peasant in rural China, but for a stroke of luck when his teacher suggested him as a potential ballet student. This changed his life from one type of hardship to another with markedly different challenges, but one which left him lonely, confused about the dogma he had so wholeheartedly embraced and geographically isolated from his family.
It is interesting to read as the young man goes from blind adoration of Chairman Mao and all the things that come with Communism, to a dawning awakening that the West is not the den of inequity that he has been led to believe. But is is the latter half of the book that has led me to offer 4 stars instead of 5 - I felt it was a little rushed, especially his well publicised defection, and efforts to settle in the west and raise a family. I guess we in the West are more interested in his early struggling years, but the challenges he faced as an adult are nonetheless fascinating.
There is no doubt that this is a sincere and amazing story. It is written with a wry humour that makes the tales of wrenching poverty readable (I have no desire to ever taste dried yams!), and gives us an interesting insight into how difficult life was in China under Communism. Mr Li seems a happy and settled man now with a lovely family - I would say he has had a fair fight to get there.
Eric Langager in his review says it best........2006-12-12
This book is difficult because a very lucky boy suffered much to become a wonderful ballet dancer. He earned all his success with work. But then he defected to the west, harming his mentors in America and China, endangering his family and friends with the possibility of political reprisals. As a defector and highly skilled dancer, he immediately entered the American world of privilege. Barbara and George Bush personally involve themselves with his life, pulling strings to help him get what he wants. He is a pet of the famous and rich everywhere. He lives a life that many Americans can only imagine. Again, he earns this by working very, very hard at his dancing.
So it is hard to feel bad at seeing a rare instance of a person who works hard win the rewards that she/he deserves. It happens all too rarely. But as reviewer Eric Langager states, it brought up mixed feelings, too. As an artist, I can understand that Cunxin wanted to make the choice that allowed him to grow in his art. But he dwells little on the price that others paid.
Book Description
Chairman Mao's personal physician and confidant for twenty two years, takes us for the first time into the Chinese dictator's very private world.
Customer Reviews:
This poor poor doctor.......2007-08-24
All the while while reading this book, the only thing I could think about was to feel for this poor poor doctor. Dr. Li was supposedly headed for a great life as a doctor in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, by following his brother's urging, he returned to China to a pretty much "doomed" career. Not only did he not get to pick his hospital job as wanted after returning, but after being summoned to be Mao's personal doctor, his dreams as a neurosurgeon was pretty much over. He was abolished to pretty much treating common colds and maladies, and acting as "nanny" to the Mao family, living in fear throughout the 20 years that he would be blamed for any illness of Mao.
I also felt so much for Dr. Li's wife Lillian whose career was reduced to rudimentary tasks.
Not a global view, but a wonderful sharp focus.......2007-01-18
This is a fascinating examination of one of the most powerful and (arguably) destructive world leaders of the 20th century. For somebody like me with a very basic familiarity of the history of Communist China, this book is a little lacking as a biography. It offers little detail on Mao's background and nothing about his rise to power. It does provide, however, a unique perspective on the Chairman's life between the years of 1954, when Dr. Li became Mao's personal physician, and Mao's death in 1976. It is the first biography I've ever read to so closely examine the head/body connection in terms of how one's politics affect one's health and one's health, one's politics.
The book has a natural bias, since Dr. Li lived with Mao throughout most of this time and was directly involved in many of the events described. He seems to strive for frankness, but a reader might sense that his memories are colored by his own attempts to save face. In some respects, it's more memoir of Li than biography of Mao--though that seems a small point to quibble about, since Mao was such a profound presence and influence in Li's life. Those seeking a detached perspective are advised to look elsewhere; this is a purely personal view.
I found it very rewarding. It humanized Mao to a much greater extent than biographies of political leaders generally do. Li seems to want to do justice to his subject, casting blame where appropriate and giving credit where he believes credit is due. The overall picture it presents of the Chairman is of a man with a sharply manipulative mind, but far more power than he could manage; with a much greater love for himself and his image than for the people he professed to serve. But at the same time, though Li may not intentionally have presented the image, Mao also emerges as a prisoner of the system he helped to emplace and so liberally exploited, particularly as he ages and his heath deteriorates. Hounded by his own superstitions and paranoias, he was ill-served by the sycophants he chose to surround him, but so blinded by his own cult of personality that he could never accept a true friend. This towering and terrifying figure is reduced to a querulous, feeble old man with no recourse to privacy or claim to humanity even in death, where his objectification extended to the point that his doctors were ordered to preserve his bloated corpse for eternal display. Sadly, I can't help but think that the Chairman would have approved.
take a look.......2007-01-06
Fascinating reading but not substaniated with facts. A personal experience point of view which may well be close to the truth.
Also a lesson of survival from Dr. Li.......2006-11-29
This book is not only an entertaining way to learn Chinese modern history as many of the reviewers here pointed out but also an important personal lessons of survival when we have to deal with a difficult boss for example. Borrowing the language from "7 habits of effective people," it is to focus your energy on your circle of influence and not on the circle of concern. In this book there are countless examples of people who did the latter (voiced their concern about the welfare of China as a nation and the common people) and invited misfortune upon themselves almost without exception. Dr. Li taught us that we must be aware of what we can do and never worry about what we cannot do.
If I could recommend only one China book... .......2006-08-27
Dr. Li was the man responsible for Mao's health from 1954 until Mao's death in 1976. He saw a lot. He's honest, eminently readable, and eye-opening. The translation is excellent. A cover blurb by Professor Andrew J. Nathan, Columbia University, calls it, "The most revealing book ever published on Mao, perhaps on any dictator in history." I agree with that. Even though it's almost 700 pages, I enjoyed every word. Long-time subscribers know I prefer to read a book in one sitting instead of two. Dr. Li had me for three, despite my notoriously short attention span. If I could recommend only one China book...
As I've mentioned elsewhere, this book makes me feel like I've been "behind the scenes" during Mao's regime. I almost want to go back and reread all my "China books" and enjoy my new perspective.
Customer Reviews:
It's a College TextBook.......2004-11-23
It's a pretty good one too, but it's still a college text. The orientation of this book is far more theoretical than practical, complete with abstract mathematical notation that sometimes does more to confuse than to elucidate (although the author, to his credit, includes a glossary of mathematical notation early in the text). Still, the book is complete and up-to-date, covering everything from probability theory and number theory through the latest stuff on PKI, symmetric crypto (including AES), and authentication.
Cryptography is not an easy subject, and this book will take a while to wade through for all but the most mathematically astute readers. Nonetheless, for those wanting a "deep dive" into the theoretical underpinnings of the subject, this is a good book. Security practitioners will likely find Schneier's "Applied Cryptography" an easier, more enjoyable, and equally beneficial read, although it is due for an update.
Good reference, poorly edited.......2004-05-20
What's great about Mao's book is that so many aspects of cryptography are covered in an approachable manner and with many good examples.
What's not so great about Mao's book is that it is chock full of errors. There are many mathematical typos. But what really kills this book for me are the ridiculous number of English mistakes - on average about two or three per page. Most mistakes are simple grammatical mistakes that can be re-parsed by the reader on the fly. However, there are more serious errors that make it very difficult to understand the meaning of significant passages and concepts.
Given Mao's refreshing conversational style it's a real shame that Prentice Hall couldn't come up with some decent editing. Hopefully a second edition will fix this.
Best of all.......2004-03-19
Excellent,the best of all modern treatment on this subject,All in one guide.
Not for beginner.Icluded are many new features as ID based,Pairing,Provable security etc.
Nguyen Quoc Nam
Very good book!.......2004-01-08
Cryptography has been around for a long time but a solid introductory crypto book is hard to find. This is one of the best crypto book I have ever bought. Well worth the investment and I am sure it is a book that I can always go back to if I need to look up something. It has a nice number theory chapter but I wish it could be more in depth(provides more proofs). The chapters on public-key crypto and related crypto.techniques are very well written. This book also covers some nice research result one can only found on some research papers(if one cares to dig). I am very impressed with this book! Not too "dry" nor too "elementary!"
Very good book!.......2004-01-08
Cryptography has been around for a long time but a solid introductory crypto book is hard to find. This is one of the best crypto book I have ever bought. Well worth the investment and I am sure it is a book that I can always go back to if I need to look up something. It has a nice number theory chapter but I wish it could be more in depth(provides more proofs). The chapters on public-key crypto and related crypto.techniques are very well written. This book also covers some nice research result one can only found on some research papers(if one cares to dig). I am very impressed with this book! Not too "dry" nor too "elementary!"
Average customer rating:
- The men who Would be King: The Chairman and the Generalissimo
- A nuanced portrait of a complex man.
- Excellent Book...But Missing Some Info
- Beats the Competition
- A fine and comprehensive view of Mao's life and career - quite sympathetic to Mao
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Mao: A Life
Philip Short
Manufacturer: Holt Paperbacks
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Amazon.com
Of the three great tyrants of the 20th century--Hitler, Stalin, and Mao--the West generally knows the least about the latter. What we do know is that he was every bit as genocidal in his policies as either of the other two great villains of the age. In fact, in purely statistical terms, Mao might have been responsible for the deaths of more people than Hitler and Stalin combined. However, Philip Short's immense but immensely readable and impressively researched biography of the man goes far deeper than this. Yes, he acknowledges, Mao was a tyrant, but then China always has been run by tyrants; it never has had a tradition of democracy. And Mao was also an idealist: the deaths of millions was, as he saw it, the price that his country had to pay for being dragged from a state of medieval servitude--perpetually on the brink of famine--to that of a modern, industrialized, self-sufficient nation, in the space of a single lifetime. Short also humanizes Mao, and shows a man who had a profound and sincere interest in Chinese philosophy and poetry, and a surprisingly sharp sense of humor. None of this can exonerate Mao from the charge of inhumanity on an epic scale. But it does make for a much more rounded and complex portrait of the figure who, as the 21st century unfolds, might be shown to have had more influence on world history than either Hitler or Stalin. --Christopher Hart, Amazon.co.uk
Book Description
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 blood purge and agricultural failures 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 known as the Cultural Revolution. One cannot understand today's China without first understanding Mao, and Philip Short's masterly assessment -- informed by a wealth of new sources -- allows the reader to understand this colossal figure whose shadow will dominate the twenty-first century.
Customer Reviews:
The men who Would be King: The Chairman and the Generalissimo.......2007-01-31
Short, Philip (1999) Mao: A Life (Holt: New York)
Fenby, Jonathan (2003) Chiang Kai-Shek: China's Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost (Carroll & Graf: New York).
On October 1, 1949 Chairman Mao Zedong stood at the Gate of Heavenly Peace and declared the founding of the People's Republic of China. He told the assembled crowd, "We, the 475 million Chinese people have stood up and our future is infinitely bright." He further continued "The Chinese people have stood up." Two months the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) achieved later final victory. The leader of the Kuomintang (KMT), Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, fled with his party to the Chinese provincial island of Taiwan. That day was the endgame of a battle that began twenty-two years earlier during the 1927 Autumn Harvest Uprising in Hunan.
Both Mao and Chiang are synonymous with the history of modern China. Both men came from similar backgrounds, had similar strategies and similar visions for China. Each man came from humble origins - Chiang the son of a salt merchant and Mao the son of a well off peasant. Mao and Chiang also sought to remake China as a modern nation within the world of nation-states. On more than one occasion each man was willing to use the other for their own struggle within their respective parties. To a degree, they were peas in a pod in modern China.
The capturing of these complicated men in their pod has been a complicated process for most writers. Many writers are trapped in their internal politics to capture the true person behind the images. Mao and Chiang both have had devoted followers and devote detractors who were more than willing to take a blind eye to things both good and bad done by these men.
Short and Fenby, however, do not. These two biographies are both extremely objective and sound. Mao is seen as the terrible dictator that he was. "His rule brought about the deaths of more of his own people than any other leader in history." Short admires Mao as being the man "who wrenched China from it medieval torpor and forced it into the contours of a modern nation."
Fenby, meanwhile, is equally objective in his assessment of the Generalissimo. Chiang's regime, both on the Mainland and on Taiwan, was not the thriving democracy it is even though of in the west. But in fact, it was a authoritarian one "organized on Leninist lines with a repressive internal security apparatus." Yet in the wake of three decades of horrid revolution, "Chiang and his era become less of the nightmare painted after the Communist victory."
Without Mao or Chiang China would probably still be the semi-colonial backwater it was when they were born in the late nineteenth century. Both men helped to unmake the old feudalist China ran for the betterment of Qing Dynasty and laid the groundwork for the extreme economic growth both on the Mainland and on Taiwan. Each Short and Fenby attempt to capture these two complicated men who will dominate the pages of history for centuries to come. Each is a fantastic read about the two men who would be king.
A nuanced portrait of a complex man........2006-12-19
Of all the great 20th century dictators, Mao seems the hardest to fathom. This is probably because of the way his mind worked and the peculiarities of his weltenschaung. It would be useless to pin down his psyche with a choice quotation or two. The man who famously said that "power flows out of the barrel of a gun" has also been reported as saying that it is "a mistake to believe that weapons decide everything". Above all -- in Phillip Short's excellent boigraphy -- Mao come across as a man of contradictions. He saw the world in dialectical, yin-yang terms. One feels, almost, that the great turmoils he unleashed were his way of ensuring that the great proletarian revolution remained permanant and forever dialectical and always violent. Stasis would be bad for China.
To those brought up under a western-inspired education system and world-view, Mao seems like a capricious crank, a heartless monster. In Philip Short's treatment, however, Mao displays a preternatural sense of nuance and subtlety of thought, and a finely-honed sense of brinkmanship (as in the Cultural Revolution where he let loose the forces of revolution upon the Party itself).
And what of his legacy ? Short argues that an important distinction needs to be made between Mao and the other dictators: The overwhelming majority of deaths under his rule were the unintended consequence of policies, not the deliberate genocide of a class of people (like the Jews or the Kulaks). Mao's cavalier attitude towards deaths on a massive scale is acknowledged. To Mao, a millions deaths is merely a part of the dialectics of revolution. In this sense he was indeed a monster.
Today China is a capitalist country in all but name. I think Mao would have seen this as a natural state of affairs, given the contradictions inherent in world history.If he were to come back from the grave, he would judge that the time is now ripe for him to unleash another great upheaval. Capitalist stasis is also not good !
Excellent Book...But Missing Some Info.......2006-12-11
This is a superbly written biography of Mao Zedong who I feel should be in any Sinophile's library. The great detail of Mao Zedong's early life and how he got into Communism is excellent. The description of his Anarchist/Marxist philosophy gives a reader a very clear understanding on why Communism came about in China; that it was mostly accepted by the majority of the Chinese population (especially peasants) and not initially enforced upon them, a view held by most Americans. The sad developments of Hundred Flowers Campaign, Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution are also revealed in great detail.
However, no matter how good this book is, I'm still a little bothered by some of it's lack of details on certain very important aspects of modern Chinese history.
1) Not enough was mention about his relationship with Japanese when China was engaged in the war with Japan. Nothing was mentioned on any possible collaboration with Japan that would have upset certain Chinese who claimed that the Communists did more against Japanese than Nationalist.
2) And talking about the Sino Japanese War, why wasn't the big battle of Operation Ichigo mentioned? China would have faced annihilation from Japan during this gigantic operation in 1944, something that worried China greatly and affect the future of the Communists and Nationalists.
3) Not enough about Zhou Enlai was mentioned. Zhou Enlai's proposal of the Four Modernization program was used by Deng Xiaoping to transformed China. I felt this is ultra-important information that should have been mentioned about the 70s. The contrast of Mao Zedong's ultra left views with Zhou's moderate views would have given the reader a great understanding how Deng's program succeeded in the great transformation of modern China from Mao's disastrous programs.
4) Mao Zedong developed some sort of mental illness later in life which caused the strange series of events during the cultural revolution, especially his purge of Liu Shaoqi; this mental illness was possibly caused by drugs (this was mentioned in Harrison Salisbury's "New Emperors" this would have explained his erratic behavior during his old age.
But otherwise this is a truly good book. I am most impressed by Short's ultra unbiased viewpoints.
Anybody who read this book should compare it with the Chiang Kai Shek's biography, " Chiang Kai Shek: China's Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost", by Jonathan Fenby.
Beats the Competition.......2006-12-10
Miles ahead of Chang and Halliday. Don't waste your time on their simple-minded view of history as a contest between black cowboy hats and white ones. Philip Short is a real historian, and this is history at its best.
A fine and comprehensive view of Mao's life and career - quite sympathetic to Mao.......2006-04-28
This is now the standard life of Mao, but for me it was like reading a history of the Cuban Missile Crisis that still talked about how Kennedy stared down Khrushchev without mentioning the secret deal for the U.S. to remove missiles from Turkey. That is, it is sympathetic to the point of touting an official line at the expense of giving us the full story. Still, it is useful to know what the official line is and this is a good life of Mao from his youth through his entire career.
Personally, I consider Mao one of the great killers of the 20th century, but I also know that most Chinese do not see him that way. There are some who see him as a monster for what he did to hundreds of millions of people while he ruled China and for the tens of millions who died because of his policies. Short always has a ready excuse to absolve Mao of direct evil, even while admitting that Mao is indeed responsible. The Chinese I have spoken to who admire Mao do so because of his strength in freeing China from the West and making China into a world power.
China has a history of strong emperors who ruled with an iron fist and under whose rule many people died. Mao was a great student of Chinese history and new how to appeal to its themes and traditions. In the Chinese view, they have plenty of people, and if some die and China becomes strong, so be it. Mao played on this sensibility to the hilt. However, I am not Chinese and am free to judge him according to my lights and for me he was one of the greatest monsters of all time. Anyone who condemns ANY American leader in our history as a killer or a monster and yet praises Mao is a hypocrite beyond the power of the word to convey a strong enough level of hypocrisy. But my view isn't the view of this book or the view of the Chinese and they should have the leaders they want. It is their nation and culture after all. And this book will give you a view of Mao more in line with how he is viewed by the country he helped re-create than the critical books such as "The Unknown Mao" or "The Private Life of Chairman Mao" (which are often attacked by people who support Mao - however, the details of most of the horrible events described do show up in even this biography if you read closely and look past the airbrushing).
The book does read well and will likely lead the unwary into feeling admiration for this man. He certainly was an amazing man and one of great genius. Whether you see him as a hero worthy of veneration or one of the great monsters in history, Mao is certainly an historic figure that one should know. Reading across the spectrum of views is probably the best way to get a more true picture of the man and his career than you will get from either his supporters or his detractors. So, this would be a good candidate for one of the kinder views of Mao that is still authoritative and fairly comprehensive.
Customer Reviews:
A Profound Work .......2007-07-21
Looking at the other reviews on this book, many complain that it is a simple, out-dated work, with few insights provided. I see this book as being written with the goal of a general educating his soldiers. Short this book creates the structure of how the general want's to see guerrilla units created (this book focusses only on guerrilla warfare). The reason that there is no complex indepth writting in this book is that it would limit the officers' ability to use their imagination to create fully functioning guerrilla units. Leaving the flesh off, forces the leaders to adapt to their specific area of operations putting the flesh on the structure themselves. There is a lot to be drawn out of this book, and to only skim or read it once is doing the reader doing himself/herself a diservice. I bet that Bin Laden has read this book more than once, now if we can only get our politicians to read it once.
The Beginner's Guide to Understanding Guerilla Warfare.......2007-06-04
Mao Zedong's, On Guerilla Warfare, is an excellent beginner's guide to understanding guerilla in all its aspects. It is clearly written and very easy to understand from a layman's point of view. Several important lessons can be easily gleaned from the text (like how support of the people is all important). In addition, it is a short book that can be read in a day or two. Rarely such books on warfare are brief as this one (except for Sun Tzu's Art of War).
This book should be required reading for any military officer now serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. In spite of its implied communist overtones, the lessons gleaned from On Guerilla Warfare are completely applicable to the wars of today.
A How Too Book.......2007-04-04
A manual on how to change the world by a man that did. Gives insight into Mao's thinking.
Mao's Masterpiece on Guerilla Warfare.......2007-03-26
Despite its title, this is two books in one. The editor/translator, Samuel B. Griffith II, writes an extensive and deep review of Mao's work, from the perspective of an American officer. Taking into account the timeline of his various comments, beginning when the US and Mao's communists were allies during World War II and ending when the US was entrenched in Vietnam, Griffith's remarks reveal both admiration for Mao and, later, panicked urgency. Indeed, by the time the US is in Vietnam, Griffith is calling on established nations to develop programs to eradicate guerilla movements, an interesting viewpoint considering the fact that the United States itself was born of such a movement.
Mao's approach to presenting guerilla warfare is far more abstract than that of Che. To his credit, Mao explains the relationship between Guerilla units of various types and traditional established military forces. This, I believe, is a product of his experiences as first a guerilla and later a participant in a united front against Imperial Japan. The complexity of the situation in China, along with the spatial and temporal scale, make Mao's experience and assessment far more general and representative of guerilla warfare as a whole than Che's experience and assessment. Where Che dealt primarily with small insurrections/revolutions against smaller parties in smaller conflicts, Mao's guerilla experience consumed most of his lifetime and ranged from insurrection, through anti-imperialist warfare, and finally in revolution.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in an abstract approach to guerilla warfare from what probably was the most experience man in history on the topic.
800 Pound Gorilla, does Guerilla.......2006-04-21
Mao Tse-Tung: revolutionary, visionary, God-Emperor of Dune, damned fine singing voice. In all honesty, I kow-tow before Mao, certainly a genius of military and political strategy and tactics who ranks up there with Napoleon: sure he cracked a few eggs in making his hyper-power omelette, but look what he had to work with! Look what he did! Look how he turned a withered, senescent, chopped-up concession-ridden fiasco into a bristling, somewhat scary little monster that managed to hold off the two duelling superpowers of the Age!
In due deference to the Great Chairman, Mao was a man ahead of his time, and a long way behind it: he was very Zen. He was a Warrior-Philosopher King. He was focused: he once said "Power flows from the barrel of a gun". You think Mao would have put up with Michael Moore blabbering around in the Great Hall of the People, or had any patience for fools at the New York Times op-ed desk babbling on about Gitmo?
More to the point: Mao slaughtered millions of his own people, and yet he still had higher approval ratings than Bush!
With that in mind, let us all do a little bow before Mao. If he's up there, somewhere, beaming down at us from the Great Heavenly Hall of the People: hey, man, take a bow, Mao!
With that in mind, I was actually hanging out in a bookstore this evening, checking out the wares, and I asked the prim, no doubt uber-liberal, schoolmarmish clerk if they had a little Mao. She said they stocked "On Guerilla Warfare", so I sat back and dug a little on the Mao scene.
Guess what? "On Guerilla Warfare" ain't all that. No doubt, it's the kind of book some sextegenerian dinty-eyed Boston hippy with a long greasy grey ponytail would dig on---ironically the very guy, if a Revolution did come, would spend his final seconds twitching on the end of somebody's bayonet.
Anyway: the point is, "On Guerilla Warfare" is hopelessly dated. It's nowhere near as yummy and relevant as the Little Red Book, and I can boil it down for you as follows:
*Your army is small and nimble. Keep it moving, keep it stealthy, use the shadows, don't face off against a field army or you'll die like a dog.
*Win hearts and minds, Comrade! Work in the fields with the peasants: rebuild the villages the Imperialist running dogs and their Capitalist masters have burned and razed!
*Fight the Peasant's War! Cheap, cheap, cheap---Mao invented Top Ramen!
*Use Retreat as an Offensive Tactic. Pull back, draw the Enemy in, and pull back again---until you're on what Sun Tzu called "Deadly Ground", and then smash the b*stard.
All of this stuff has been handled before, by Sun Tzu and Clausewitz, and far more elegantly.
Not that "On Guerilla Warfare" is a bad book. On the contrary: this is truth in advertising---Mao wrote a stripped-down instruction manual for fighting a modern army with a chickensh*t ragtag peasant army. His bonafides? He won. He kicked Japanese a**, then he turned around and kicked Chiang Kai-Shek back to Formosa. Good going, Mao!
It's just that---well, Jesus, it's very dated. All kinds of stuff about the 'Japanese fascist Imperialist army', the weapons and 'material issued the Peasant Comrades fighting Imperialist Tyranny', that sort of thing. And as it is an instruction manual, it's prosaic in its specificity, to wit: "the K-Ration, issued by the American imperialists in the hope of using our valiant Comrades as stopgaps against the Japanese Imperialist Fascist invaders, is actually a useful weapon: it is cold, and blunt, and can crack a skull."
You see what I'm sayin', Dawg? Word!
As a work of incipient tyrant psychology, it is a little interesting. Mao is obviously writing to impress: in a way, it's amusing to envision a time when Mao felt he needed to score points.
But in the end, I'm sorry to say, "On Guerilla Warfare" is a bore, a snore, a big zero. Unless you've got a big beef with the invading Japanese Imperialistic Fascist Army---these days relegated to packs of hungry tourists with camcorders---I'd avoid.
Then again, this is a slim little volume, so you can skim it in the bookstore (or library, Comrade) in 30 minutes. Then you'll have the knowledge you need should a Japanese Fascist Aggressor creep out from beneath your bed: you can smash him in the head with a K-ration.
JSG
Customer Reviews:
Dogmatism is bad; very bad.......2007-07-09
Like almost any politician, there are things I admire about them. Mao implemented measures that were preferable to that of Chiang Kai-shek, but nevertheless, if Mao ever stood trial, he would deserve nothing short of torture...then shot.
This book is filled with Mao quotes; some good, but most dull. What's interesting about the book isn't its content, but the fact that this book was distributed, and required remembrance among many students, as if it were a religious manuscript - which it essentially became. The Little Red Book became, yes, equivalent to a religious textbook whose doctrines became responsible for the deaths of millions of dissidents. This is an example of why dogmatism of any kind is horrible. It was not his "Marxist" belief that killed people, as any "title" can be attached to any dogmatic person out to attain political power; it was just THAT which killed people - his aim for political power. "Communism" just happened to be the leading alternative to what Chiang Kai-shek represented, which was state capitalism, or "mercantilism" (the allowance of private property within a governmental framework). Titles like "communist", "socialist", "capitalist", "anarchist", "Marxist" have been entirely evacuated of any essence, as China under Mao considered itself "socialist", yet was a dictatorship, while Britain calls itself "socialist" too, and there's far more political freedom.
So read this book if you're having a difficult time sleeping, or interested in knowing why Mao disregards personal freedom and subjects them to the Chinese state.
Anton Batey
Anton_Batey@yahoo.com
Review of the Little Red Book - Quotations from Chairman Mao.......2007-06-12
What a Whacko!!! Great insight into the mindset from this time period, though. If you're a history buff like me, you'll appreciate this book and it's relevance to how it shaped China's people and policies. Those policies even have some implications into today's China!!!
The most re(a)d book of the past century?.......2007-05-17
Well, maybe not the most read (although still read very much), but probably the most red. Puns aside, this book is a very important read for us today. I think the best way to show this is to make the kind of list that Mao likes to.
1. It contains the central doctrine of a superpower.
2. It is written by a great conqueror and a successful military and civic dictator.
3. It teaches us practicable and useful rules for working with or against others.
4. It indoctrinates the reader with noble ideals.
5. It teaches us about modern Chinese thought and culture.
6. It helps us understand communism: a very influential movement in history.
7. It contains a strong model of rhetoric, proven effective!
I am not a communist, and I am strongly opposed to communism, but by looking past the communism I was able to get a lot of knowledge and wisdom out of this book about other things, such as concepts of social motivation and organization, and also of strategy, and of course a persuasive rhetorical model. Mao was very conversant with the Chinese classics such as the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Lao Tzu, Confucius and the Art of War. His book of quotations is clearly modelled on the pithy, aphoristic writings of the classical Chinese philosophers and strategists. In a guarded way, I feel that Mao has written a book of that tradition and of that status. It is clearly styled after the great Chinese classics and is even more relevant than them for us today who are interested in these classics since Mao actually put his philosophies and principles to the test on a grand scale and was successful, and he is closer to us in time than they are. Very few of us have accomplished anything like what he did, so, a full study of the ethics of it aside, there is a huge amount of useful wisdom and learning contained between the covers of this book; and not only Machiavellian!
The 22-year-old student admitted it was a hoax.......2005-12-27
...the student confessed that he had made it up after being confronted by the professor who had repeated the story to a Standard-Times reporter.
The professor, Brian Glyn Williams, said he went to his former student's house and asked about inconsistencies in his story. The 22-year-old student admitted it was a hoax, Williams said.
More at...http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2005/12/24/students_tall_tale_revealed/
Answer me this please..........2005-02-11
If this is the 2nd most publicated book in the world, and it's no longer mandatory reading material, why can't I find a good copy for a buck or two?
Average customer rating:
- Fantastic and good for someone on the go
- Very Insightful
- Great Collection of Great Writings
- NIce Anthology for a nice Price
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The Communist Manifesto and Other Revolutionary Writings: Marx, Marat, Paine, Mao Tse-Tung, Gandhi and Others (Dover Thrift Editions)
Bob Blaisdell ,
Marx , and
Gandhi
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0486424650 |
Book Description
Spanning 3 centuries, this works include such milestone documents as the Declaration of Independence (1776), the Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789), and The Communist Manifesto (1848). Also included are writings by the Russian revolutionaries Lenin and Trotsky, Marat and Danton of the French Revolution, Rousseau, Gandhi, Mao, other leading figures in revolutionary thought.
Customer Reviews:
Fantastic and good for someone on the go.......2007-01-30
This is revolution a great book for someone that has somewhere to be. The writings are mostly just a few pages long so you can begin and finish a thought before you have to stop reading. The only setback is that Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" isn't in the book in it's entirety. Only the appendix for "Common Sense" is in it. It is really hard to label that a setback because this book has so much packed into it for such a reasonable price.
Very Insightful.......2006-11-05
This book is great for anyone interested in the development of new ideas. When all of these writings are taken as a whole you can really appreciate what each revolutionary was trying to convey. A great read and very well priced.
Great Collection of Great Writings.......2006-11-03
I had always wanted to read the Communist Manifesto. This book surrounds Marx's writing with others that show a clear development towards a new kind of freedom and government. When placed in the contex of other great writers of new thinking, all of these works have greater meaning.
This is a superb collection to buy.
NIce Anthology for a nice Price.......2005-09-25
For 3.50 you cannot go wrong with this Dover Anthology of revolutionary writings. Spanning the American, French, Russian and Chinese revolutions it offers a broad range from Rousseau to Paine and Mao. One of the best advantages of this edition is that it offers many speeches and small writings that normally would have to be tracked down in a library. Though there are not many completed revolutionary texts in this edition, you have to remember that it is under 5 dollars and that similar, larger anthologies also do not include that manny completed texts. So if you are interested in revolutionary writings this book would be the perfect introduction for you.
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Q: From idea to finished book, how long did Mao: The Unknown Story take to research and write?
