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
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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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The Writings of Mao Zedong, 1949-1976: September 1949-December 1955 (Writings of Mao Zedong)
Mao Tse Tung , and
Michael Y. M. Kau
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- 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
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ASIN: 0805031154 |
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
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 at the , sustained by the same autocratic process that supported China's first emperors.
One cannot understand today's China without first understanding Mao. Attempts to view Mao's life through Western lenses inevitably present a cartoonish monster or hero, both far removed from the real man. Philip Short's masterly assessment-informed by secret documents recently found in China-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:
The personalities, the influence..........2002-10-19
This book set me off on a binge of Chinese history reading. I had to know more about Kang Sheng, for example, and "Claws of the Dragon" helped shed light on this "immortal". Then there were: Zhou Enlai's hagiography 'Eldest Son' at the hands of Han Suyin; The White Boned Demon, about Jiang Qing; Mao's doctor's self-glorifying account; Deng's biography. Nothing compares to this book for readability and sense of magnitude. You meet the twenty or so people who decided the fates of a billion Chinese. Modern democracy has nothing to compare. The personalities in recent Chinese history, the importance of them, are staggering. The Great Leap, the Cultural Revolution--these hellish mass movements affected hundreds of millions of people. You get to see the tiny coterie which ordered the lives of a significant portion of the Earth's inhabitants for fifty years. An amazing book.
I wish Harrison Salisbury were still around to write an update. TNE stops in 1991 as the economy is slowing and the hardliners are asserting themselves. Deng visited the "new cities" on the South China Sea in 1993-4, invigorating them and the "capitalism with Chinese characteristics" which they represented. What followed, of course, is our recent history of China thinking itself as a great power.
what's shaped modern China.......2002-09-21
What Mao and Deng did as China's "new emperors" are well known. For Mao, the Korean war, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the establishment of China as a nuclear power; for Deng, the Reform and Opening, and the Tiananmen Massacre.
Why did they do it? This is a question that is seldomly asked and when asked, never satisfactorily answered. Salisbury has attempted to answer such a qusetion with more depth than the simple-minded answer "because they want to stay in power". Salisbury carefully laid out for the readers how Mao and Deng's acts were shaped by their personal histories, by attitudes of other countries toward China, and by the burden of Chinese history and culture (unlike America, the Chinese leaders did not start from a clean slate, instead, they carried 5,000 years of history with them). In short, this book is about how history, culture, international hostility and personality has shaped modern China; how these factors brought out the "emperor instincts" in Mao and, to a lesser extent, Deng.
Indeed, what Mao did was almost right out of history books. The emperors' attempts to annhilate their enemies when they sensed danger, the emperors' attempts to better people's lives using means that were totally naive and against human nature, has happened numerous times in Chinese history. China has been too burdened with its history, and Mao was simply an emperor fulfilling his roles while the whole world was watching.
The book also touched upon an interesting (and sad) question: what blames should be placed on ordinary people? It was Mao who unleashed the darkest aspects of human nature during Cultural Revolution, but the darkest sides of some Chinese people were so dark that one has to wonder: why were these people worse than beasts? The Red Guards and the on-lookers who readily cheered as thousands and thousands of people were tortured and beaten (or drowned, pushed from high-rise buildings) to death has to make one wonder: why did they do it? why did they have no judgment of their own and could become the worst creatures on earth simply because of a few words from their leaders? I believe that, if China wants to prevents something like the Cultural Revolution from happening again, it will not be enough to openly admit Mao's role in these atrocities. Ordinary people will also have to do some soul-searching.
After reading this book, I felt extremely sad. I sensed that the disasters that happened to the Chinese people in the past decades could have been avoided. If only Mao had studied Western politics instead of focusing entirely on the deeds of Chinese emperors; if only Kim Ii-Sung wasn't such a fool as to start the Korean War; if only the Chinese people were exposed to Western culture earlier and possessed more qualities than blind patriotism and loyalty; if only more of Mao's subordinates were willing to be outspoken; if only Stalin was a bit less sinister toward China; if only America was a bit more open-minded and not refusing Mao's request for negotiations outright... The list is endless. History is full of missed chances, and ordinary people suffer. Although no reversal is possible, we may be able to learn from the past and avoid some disasters in the future. Because of this, I highly recommend this book.
I am a fan of Salisbury's works for a long time, and this book has not disappointed me. The writing is compelling, the materials well organized, and his unbiased reporting is as good as ever. This is one of the best books on the modern history of China.
a great reporter with a long history of China interest.......2001-04-24
Salisbury's book is so good, his reporting so valuable, that it will provide ample basic information to future historians as they attempt to sift through this period with some scholarly distance. Just prior to Tiananmen "incident" as it is called in China, he went and talked to the last surviving people who remember Mao and Deng, the two most powerful leaders of Communist China. It was a unique time, as China was open for just a moment during a reform period before shutting down again after Tiananmen and those people were about to disappear forever. Salisbury found them and recorded their memories.
The result is a masterpiece of reporting, bringing Mao and Deng to life and in detail like no other account that I have read - and I have read a lot of them! The book concentrates on government and power politics, leaving the details of policies to others, which strikes just the right balance.
Highly recommended.
Awesome on Mao, Ok on Deng.......2001-01-03
I recently read the new Philip Short biography on Mao. A long and good book. However, I did not learn half as much about Mao from Short's book as I did from the New Emperors.
Salisbury writes a highly readable, brilliant book on Mao, the founding of the people's republic of China, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution.
The book does a great job showing the personal side of Mao, how he treated other people, and how he changed over time between 1949 and 1976.
The book also does a great job on the early career of Deng Xiaoping. However, feel the book falters on covering the demise of the Gang of Four and the early rule of Deng. As great as the book was up to this point, I feel he does not thoroughly cover how the gang of four was defeated and the early rule of Deng.
The book recovers in its coverage of Tianaman Square and in its conclusions about China.
This book is 3/4 brilliant and 1/4 ok.
A book that needs to be read by more Americans.......2000-07-18
Let's face it, China is rapidly replacing Russia as the chief rival of the U.S. in world affairs. And anyone who wants to begin to understand modern China must start with this book. Harrison Salisbury is an excellent journalist and writer who chronicles the tragic history of China from the beginning of the communist regime through the early 1990s. He focusses on the two leaders, Mao and Deng, who guided China into the modern era, causing at least as much if not far more destruction to their country the good that came from modernity. The irony is that while Mao was an egomaniacal madman, Deng was at heart a decent man who rebounded from being jailed and humiliated by the Cultural Revolution only to ruin his more benevolent legacy at Tianamen Square in 1989. Salisbury's account is readable and insightful and is essential for anyone with an interest in the country.
Book Description
Title: The Art of War by Mao Tse-tung - Special Edition Book Description (formally called "Annotation"):
This Special Edition of "The Art of War" by Mao Tse-tung contains his four most important discourses on warfare. The parallels between Chairman Mao's thoughts on strategy and those of Sun Tzu belie a direct lineage of culture and genius projected across twenty five centuries.
First, "Problems of Strategy in China's Revolutionary War", considers the rational and classical stratagems underlying the conduct of a successful war.
Second, "Problems of Strategy in Guerrilla War Against Japan", discusses the conduct of guerrilla actions relative to, and within, conventional warfare.
Third, "On Protracted War", deals with a wide range of topics including mobile warfare, guerrilla warfare, positional warfare, war of attrition and war of annihilation.
Fourth, "Problems of War and Strategy" summarizes the lessons of the previous discourses and reiterates the famous dictum: "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."
Other Special Editions in this series that deal with the subject of warfare and strategy include:
The Art of War By Sun Tzu - Special Edition
The Art of War By Baron De Jomini - Special Edition
The Art of War & The Prince By Machiavelli - Special Edition
Customer Reviews:
A Crafty Devil.......2005-08-16
Mao Tse-tung was one of the most important figures of the twentieth century, and he was a crafty devil. He was a scholar, a philosopher, a warrior, a leader, a general, a statesman, a master of propaganda, a wheeler-dealer, and totally unscrupulous - in short, he was an extraordinarily successful politician.
Anyone who doesn't know who Mao was, or understand how important a political figure he was, has no business writing a review of his work. Mao was more than the logical successor to Sun Tzu. He not only read Sun Tzu's "Art of War" in the original Chinese, but he used its lessons to capture the hearts and minds of one-fifth of the world's population to become the ruler of China. I think what Mao had to say about strategy and warfare just might be relevant.
This book, "The Art of War by Mao Tse-tung - Special Edition" doesn't tell you about Mao and what he had to say, it actually IS what Mao had to say. It is not a second-hand account by some hack historian; it is the real deal.
A Master at Work.......2005-06-18
Whether you want to start a revolution or prevent one, everyone who has an interest in political power has a valid reason to read these important essays by the 20th century's most successful revolutionary. Mao Tse-tung understood and used the keys to power as effectively as they have ever been used. This book is a prime example of Mao at work - exhorting, cajoling and instructing - at a time when he was closely in touch with the hearts and minds of his people.
Those who tend to dismiss Mao Tse-tung as a demagogue miss the point that he had a agenda that was separate and apart from his ideology: to rule and reform China. He first sold his revolution to the people on the basis of their discontent and rationalized his political views to obtain his objectives. He was a master of contorted logic, rationalization, salesmanship - effective propaganda. This book shows him, in his own words, at his most subtle and persuasive.
That is not to say that Chairman Mao did not deeply care for the welfare of China and her people. To begin the movement of the massive feudal kingdom that was China in the early 20th century toward the world power that China is rapidly becoming will be remembered by history as the step that lifted countless millions from abject poverty. Who is to say that Mao's ends did not justify his means?
A special understanding of strategy and warfare.......2005-05-19
The Art of War by Mao Tse-tung - Special Edition is an extraordinary book. This collection of Mao's writings clearly demonstrates a special understanding of strategy and warfare. In comparison to other works on warfare, it stands at or very near the head of its class.
On comparing their books, the continuous threads that connect Mao Tse-tung to Sun Tzu are immediately obvious. To say that Mao was a student of Sun Tzu is both correct and an over-generalization. One cannot dismiss Mao Tse-tung's skill at conducting a series of wars that won control of the most populous nation on earth. His thoughts on warfare extend and enhance those of Sun Tzu by the cumulative experience of two millennia.
Although Mao's political views are rigid to the point of being pedantic, in the light of close examination his views on strategy are as fluid as quicksilver and as nearly as brilliant. He moves from sing-song lessons by rote to profound insight with effortless ease. No library or education dealing with warfare or strategy is complete without this contribution by The Chairman.
Book Description
The first Westerner to meet Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Communist leaders in 1936, Edgar Snow came away with the first authorized account of Mao’s life, as well as a history of the famous Long March and the men and women who were responsible for the Chinese revolution. Out of that experience came Red Star Over China, a classic work that remains one of the most important books ever written about the birth of the Communist movement in China. This edition includes extensive notes on military and political developments in China, further interviews with Mao Tse-tung, a chronology covering 125 years of Chinese revolution, and nearly a hundred detailed biographies of the men and women who were instrumental in making China what it is today.
Customer Reviews:
fair.......2007-05-13
among all the books that make comments on china that been written by western people this is an fair one and good one, coz there are relatively few bias.
Informative but Naive.......2007-03-26
In 1936 U.S. journalist Edgar Snow (1905-1972) traveled to the remote hills of Shaanxi Province in order to interview Mao Zedong and the Communist insurgents at their rural base near Yan'an. Snowe wrote this book after spending months interviewing and observing Mao Zedong, Zhou En-Lai, Lin Bao, etc., plus their veteran soldiers. Readers get a bird's-eye view of the Chinese communists in the 1930's, their history, and their rugged life in the hills. Readers also see the harsh realities of impoverished Chinese peasants, plus the corrupt, incompetent, and often cruel rule of the Nationalist government led by Chiang Kai-shek. These realities led many peasants to favor Mao's insurgents, who went on to win over China in 1949. This is an interesting narrative, but one cannot overlook the author's naivety. Snow let his hosts review the manuscript, and he never sensed the potential for later problems via police state rule, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution.
This informative book is worth reading despite its flaws. In part because of this book Snow was charged with disloyalty in the 1950's, leading him to move from the USA to Europe. Ironically, Snow's last trip to China in 1969-1970 helped paved the way for U.S. President Nixon's 1972 visit and improved realtions between the USA and China.
An excellent look at the Chinese Civil War.......2005-12-20
For the last few decades, we Americans have had an extremely negative view of the Chinese Communist Party, and especially such now-mythical forefathers as Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, whose drastic excesses and failures have led to their demonisation in Western society as mere liars, thugs, and brutish dictators. But yet, in the '30s and '40s, such men managed to overcome both the tanks and rifles of powerful Japanese war machine and the propaganda and armies of the Western-financed Nanjing government with primarily the support of the Chinease peasantry; certainly such mass support would not be easily handed to one of the dime-a-dozen bandit-kings that infested pre-1949 China. What would have driven the rural laobaixing to throw in their lot against all the power of the Kuomintang?
Snow's excellent Red Star Over China is not, as many critics seem to think, glowing puff praise of Communists. Rather, it is an in-depth, powerful explanation of the reasons for their support among both the starving poor and ethnic minorities, and an examination of how less than 200 men managed to turn this support into a mass movement powerful enough to wash both the overextended Japanese and unpopular Nationalists out of the mainland.
When Snow waxes about the moral rigor of the Red soldier and the zealous dedication of the "Little Red Devil" youth, he is not merely praising moral men, but is showing how the fanaticism of Red soldiers gave them advantages in morale and tactics the hesitant-but-well-financed KMT army could not attain. When he shows the propaganda-writing classes, it is not because Snow believes "the Red army is the fist of the poor" but because of the great importance of the Red literacy programs: the gratitude formerly-illiterate peasants felt to their teachers translated into a great respect and willingness to assist men they had once believed were "Red bandits."
Yes, under Mao great tragedies were unleashed, as his Communist zeal began to outweigh his common sense. But this book is not the story of the famines of the Great Leap Forward twenty years after Red Star Over China was writeen, nor could Snow have predicted the anarchy of the Cultural Revolution thirty years after he finished his book. This is a book about revolutionaries, not a book about the government they would later establish. And its importance as a book about revolutionaries is incredible. This is an explanation of how the world's most populous nation would fall to revolution--written by a neutral observer among the revolutionaries.
If you are of the belief that Communists are intrinsically evil and that any book finding good in them--even if to explain why they enjoyed overwhelming local popularity--you will find Red Star Over China difficult to digest. If you would prefer to think of Mao as a raving psychopathic lunatic who blundered his way into power, there are certainly other books for you to read. But if you want to see the Chinese Communist Party as it was seen by those who carried into power, you can't do any better than this, the book written by the man who watched it happen.
Regarding the Review: "A few good morsels in a bland Maoist broth".......2005-12-10
To the person who wrote the review, Alfonso Mangione, "Do you have any real knowledge of chinese history? Are you an expert on Mao Zedong?" What gives you the priviledge of ranting on and on about how Edgar Snow's interview with Mao is primarily "regurgitating his interviewees' propoganda"? Edgar Snow traveled to China to do an interview on Mao Zedong, thus, the subject of Snow's interview is Mao, and so, what is wrong with the fact that Snow published his work with Mao's personal views?
Red Star Over China is a work that should be read if one is interested in Mao, his views, and Chinese history. It is difficult to read/search accurate information on Mao in books written in English. Though Snow's work should be read with an open mind, "Red Snow Over China" brings the reader closer to the ideas and life of Mao Zedong
A Witnessed Account.......2005-09-17
Edgar Snow's "Red Star Over China" is a must for anyone, historian, political analyst, global sociologist or a scout who watches unfolding world events coming out from the Far-East and observes China's rise, and wants to understand the origins of its "Red Revolution" and its political structure since 1949.
As a self-made journalist who learned his trade in China, but remained Western all through his 13 years there, Edgar Snow witnessed first hand the impact of China's feudal rules and colonial attempts to overtake the country's resources.
Edgar Snow's accounts of the 1920's and 30's events that led to the rise of Chinese Communism were written by an innocent watcher who never abandoned his Western view but was able to make his observations through better understanding the Chinese, their culture and traditions.
And that is what makes "Red Star Over China" an important book. The ability of a man, a writer, not to be bias in his comments. Being in the midst of events and all the people that made their mark on them, Edgar Snow was able to make his points without prejudice. His opinions were influence by his own Western peers and by Chinese from a spectrum of class, thoughts, habits, ideas and affiliations. Thus making him not only a spectator but a participant.
Book Description
"Chinese philosophy before our Christian era is emphasized in this nontechnical summary of Chinese thought. Professor Creel also deals with Confucianism, the ideas of Mo-tsu and Mencius, Taoism, Legalism, and their variations and adaptations. As an introduction for the general reader, this book stands among the best."—China: A Resource and Curriculum Guide
"There exists nowhere else such a well-written presentation of the main trends in Chinese thought in so brief a space. The text is not cluttered with Chinese names and the pages are not weighed down with footnotes—but the references are there for those who want them, with suggestions for further readings. This is a book which can be understood by those who have never read anything else about China."—The New York Times Book Review
Customer Reviews:
One of the best books on Chinese political philosophy.......2006-10-05
By far the best study ever written of Chinese philosophy. Particular attention should be paid to Chapters VII, VIII and IX to understand the Asian mind. The influence of the totalitarian vision of Legalism on Chinese thought for thousands of years is not fully understood. The Chinese Empire, created in 221 B.C., was a fusion of Legalism and Confucianism. Chairman Mao was a great admirer of the first Chinese Emperor, who hated Confucianism and was a total Legalist. Indeed, modern "Communism" in China is really very much a continuation of some past trends. Check my Listamania list for more books on Legalism.
Compact, concise book, very informative........1998-07-09
H.G. Creel writes a wonderful book tracing the roots of Chinese thought from the pre-Confucian era to Mao Tse-Tung. Written in an easy to understand fashion, the book makes you want to learn more about the subject.
Old-fashioned but enjoyable.......1998-06-29
I just picked up a beautiful old copy of this at Moe's books in Berkeley. It dates from the early fifties. I don't know if this Chicago edition is simply a reprint, but I am finding it to be a throroughly well-written and enjoyable book. At times it simplifies and idealizes where perhaps a contemporary academic account might be more cautious, but this gives it a certain romance that accords with the subject matter.
Informative, but poorly written.......1998-01-02
Quite frankly, I expected more from a book that the University of Chicago Press ventured to publish. A nice summary but you'd swear that the author's first language wasn't English.
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