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 enlarge | Authors: Jung Chang, Jon Halliday
Publisher: Anchor
Category: Book
List Price: $18.95
Buy New: $9.99
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New (51) Used (21) Collectible (2) from $7.75
Avg. Customer Rating:  258 reviews
Sales Rank: 35641
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 864
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.3
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.8
ISBN: 0679746323
Dewey Decimal Number: 951.05092
EAN: 9780679746324
ASIN: 0679746323
Publication Date: November 14, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: With tracking.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Scary August 21, 2008
86 out of 90 found this review helpful
I must admit, that this is my first biography of Mao, actually my first book on Chinese history; while I have been to China at least 25 times.
Not being a professor of history, I cannot judge the truth of the book, but it certainly seems EXTREMELY well researched. There is no doubt, that the authors despise Mao, they make no apologies about it.
After a bit of a slow start (reading the "first few dozen pages" is not enough!), the book does get very interesting and very scary.
I read biographies of Stalin and of course (being a German) of Hitler. If only 20% of this book is true, both Hitler and Stalin were "harmless" compared to Mao.
One difference between Mao and Hitler / Stalin seems Mao's total lack of purpose, other than his personal power.
The authors do not mention even one good thing about Mao. It is inconceivable to me, that Mao was ONLY bad.....even Hitler built the famous German autobahns. This is the main point against this book.
After having read biographies of Hitler, Stalin and Mao, it is scary, how easy ruthless people can deceive their fellow country men.
( While I am certainly NOT putting Mr. George W. Bush ANYWHREE close to these villains, it is telling, how easily he could get things like Guantanamo Bay and the Patriot's Act passed.......)
Moan August 17, 2008
0 out of 50 found this review helpful
I must say that I was eager to begin reading this widely appreciated biography. Unfortunately, I was turned off by Mao's self indulgent character. Perhaps one day I will pick it up again, but I didn't want to waste a day of my summer vacation by reading about someone I wouldn't care to meet.
 The passive-aggressive way to world domination... July 27, 2008
32 out of 119 found this review helpful
Hitler, Stalin, Mao--of the three towering totalitarian dictators of the 20th century, Mao Tse Tung has always been considered the most benign. Darling of western leftists, Warholian pop icon, the "people's" chairman, Mao has long been a symbol for many who had absolutely no idea of the reality he represented.
In *Mao: the Unknown Story,* authors Chang and Halliday seek to correct the misperception. They portray Mao as a cold, cruel, asocial nihilist who believed in nothing--nothing, that is, except for Mao. Communism was merely a vehicle to achieving the power and privilege that Mao sought in what he considered a strictly material existence--the point of which was to personally appropriate as much material as possible. "When a man is dead," Mao reasoned, "what does he care about his reputation?"
So he'd hardly care about the conclusions Chang and Halliday advance in this scathing biography. The authors seem determined to re-establish the balance thrown off by decades of ignorance, silence, and oppression--all of which have contributed to a pseudo-heroic view of Mao. Chang and Halliday's evident "agenda" unfortunately give their book a less than objective feel--as if they felt it necessary to pile upon Mao as much dirt as possible. Mao, in these authors view, does absolutely nothing right, or for any good reason, and is virtually void of any decent motivation whatsoever. Their account is a bit like watching a prosecuting attorney giving an entirely one-sided and negative interpretation to the evidence with the sole intention of convicting the accused. There's hardly any doubt that Mao is guilty--but one can't help but feel that he's got at least a few arguments to make in his defense.
Mao's improbable rise to power makes for fascinating reading. He basically became a communist because as a young schoolteacher the Party would pay him a stipend to recruit members. Mao seems to have gone about this task a lot like an un-enterprising girl scout might sell cookies--by signing up members of his family to be communists but almost no one else! From there Mao rose through the ranks primarily by doing the opposite of whatever he was ordered or agreed previously to do. His favorite modus operandi seemed to be one of a number of variations of "I didn't get that memo." Time and time again Mao claimed that messages were lost, orders were misunderstood, phone calls disconnected. He simply "disappeared" whenever it was convenient, and then popped up again after whatever self-serving antic had become a fait accompli.
The famous Long March? -it was all a tragic sham, according to the authors, in which Mao led his followers on a wild goose chase like a crafty Moses who knew very well where he was supposed to be going but purposely took the longest most disastrous route possible to eliminate his competition and consolidate his own power. He was going to make sure that when he entered the Promised Land it would be as king. For Mao, 90% of the population was unnecessary, expendable, a point he made time and again when discussing the perfectly--in his view--option of all-out nuclear war.
From Mao's birth to his wretched death of Lou Gehrig's disease, it's all here--the purges and great leaps, the civil wars and cultural wars, the super-secret nuclear weapons programs and politically-induced famines, the Nixon/Kissinger visits on-stage and behind-the-scenes--and all of it recounted in a briskly paced, mesmerizing, almost novelistic narrative.
While it often seems one-sided and as if the authors, especially Ms. Chang, have a personal ax to grind with the chairman, *Mao* must nonetheless be considered essential reading at this point in understanding the rise and regime of Mao Tse Tung. Other more balanced books will probably pop up in its wake, but for now this one establishes an important and much-needed corrective to the popular view of a dictator all too often regarded as one of the champions of humanity's underdogs.
 Much new research, the style matters not July 26, 2008
55 out of 74 found this review helpful
This is my third biography off Mao this summer, following Lucian Pye's Mao: The Man in the Leader, and Li Zhisui's portrait of Mao based on his time as the Great Helmsman's personal physician. And I'vee recently read Walter Laquer's Staklain: The Glasnost Revelations, and Dmitri Volkogonov's biography of Lenin using formerly secret Soviet archival materials. This book is in their tradition of making available invaluable new findings that give new insights into their subject.
This book, based on interviews and research into state archives in China, Russia, and elsewhere, is very similar to the latter two. Previously unavailable material is presented which places a new light on the subject. Isn't this the kind of thing we look for in history? The style may not be for everyone, but no one reads history for style, so such criticisms entirely miss the mark, and border on ad hominem arguments.
The funny thing is, some people feel compelled to advocate for Mao. Who can imagine why? Does Stalin still have his apologists, as he did in America in the 30s and later? Does Kim Il Sung still have votaries? Claiming that Mao unified China (and why is this good for the rest of the world?) as though this somehow justified the world's greatest starvation (the laughable Great Leap Forward) is fallacious. So what romantic dreams continues to impel Mao's defenders?
This book gives great insight into Mao's background, his beginnings, his early manipulations of others, and his consistent (and quite imaginative!) scheming to get control of the party. His ingenuity at destroying and controlling others is remarkable! His provocations of Chiang kai-shek, trying to provoke civil war to compel Soviet assistance are quite creative as well. Most interesting to me has been the deconstruction of the culture of Yenan, where Mao et al invented Chinese totalitarianism. Tragically, he turned against everyone who was close to him, and inevitably, this led to his disgusting episodes of self-pity later in life.
Those who fault this book should go the historian's route, and look at the same evidence and draw their own conclusions from it. Mao's been dead for 30+ years. Get over it, and get informed. It would be good to see more biographies of Mao. After all, there is a cottage industry on Hitler biographies, and Mao Tse-tung is a subject to (at a minimum) rival him in complexity and influence.
Extremely biased but informative July 17, 2008
379 out of 391 found this review helpful
When it comes to topics such as this there will be biased views, but these authors went out of their way to let you know how they felt about Mao Tse Tung. Despite their feelings towards Mao the book was very informative and a good read. The only real problem that I had with the book was not what was written, which I find to be pretty accurate, but what was left out. Even though Mao was a psychotic, manipulative, power hungry, mass murdering, lunatic the authors neglected to inform that if it weren't for Mao, China would still be raped by every other country and not the country it is today. I'm not saying what he did was justified, only that the authors need to show all angles and not just one side. BUt all in all, I would def. recommend it.
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