Mao

Michael Lynch presents an engaging and thorough account of Mao's life and politics, making use of a wealth of primary and secondary sources. He locates Maoism in the broader context of twentieth century Chinese history, discussing the development of the Chinese Communist Party, the creation of the People's Republic of China and the Cultural Revolution, and the part played by Mao in the Cold War. Details of Mao's controversial private life as well as his political and philosophical thought add to this diverse picture of the influential leader. This well-written biography will be essential reading to anyone interested in twentieth century China and its most memorable figure.

“The most revealing book ever published on Mao, perhaps on any dictator in history.”—Professor Andrew J. Nathan, Columbia University From 1954 until Mao Zedong's death twenty-two years later, Dr. Li Zhisui was the Chinese ruler's personal physician, which put him in daily—and increasingly intimate—contact with Mao and his inner circle. in The Private Life of Chairman Mao, Dr. Li vividly reconstructs his extraordinary experience at the center of Mao's decadent imperial court. Dr. Li clarifies numerous long-standing puzzles, such as the true nature of Mao's feelings toward the United States and the Soviet Union. He describes Mao's deliberate rudeness toward Khrushchev and reveals the actual catalyst of Nixon's historic visit. Here are also surprising details of Mao's personal depravity (we see him dependent on barbiturates and refusing to wash, dress, or brush his teeth) and the sexual politics of his court. To millions of Chinese, Mao was more god than man, but for Dr. Li, he was all too human. Dr. Li's intimate account of this lecherous, paranoid tyrant, callously indifferent to the suffering of his people, will forever alter our view of Chairman Mao and of China under his rule. Praise for The Private Life of Chairman Mao “From now one no one will be able to pretend to understand Chairman Mao's place in history without reference to this revealing account.”—Professor Lucian Pye, Massachusetts Institute of Technology “Dr. Li does for Mao what the physician Lord Moran's memoir did for Winston Churchill—turns him into a human being. Here is Mao unveiled: eccentric, demanding, suspicious, unregretful, lascivious, and unfailingly fascinating. Our view of Mao will never be the same again.”—Ross Terrill, author of China in Our Time “An extraordinarily intimate portrait of Mao. [Dr. Li] portrays [Mao's imperial court] as a place of boundless decadence, licentiousness, selfishness, relentless toadying and cutthroat political intrigue.”—Richard Bernstein, The New York Times “One of the most provocative books on Mao to appear since the publication of Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China.”—Paul G. Pickowicz, The Wall Street Journal

On the fiftieth anniversary of Quotations from Chairman Mao, this pioneering volume examines the book as a global historical phenomenon.

The first documented, systematic study of a truly revolutionary subject, this 1937 text remains the definitive guide to guerrilla warfare. It concisely explains unorthodox strategies that transform disadvantages into benefits.

A lucid analysis of Mao as revolutionary general, ideologist and astute political manipulator, this introduction to the life and career of Mao Zedong provides an excellent introduction to modern Chinese history and its enigmatic protagonist.

One of the great figures of the twentieth century, Chairman Mao looms irrepressibly over the economic rise of China. Mao Zedong was the leader of a revolution, a communist who lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, an aggressive and distrustful leader, and a man responsible for more civilian deaths than perhaps any other historical figure. Now, four decades after Mao's death, acclaimed biographer Philip Short presents a fully updated and revised edition of his ground-breaking and masterly biography. Vivid, uncompromising and unflinching, Short presents in one-volume the man behind the propaganda - his family, his beliefs and his horrors. In doing so he shows us both the human being Mao was, and the monster he became.

As a result of Deng Xiaoping's reform initiatives, the austere and colorless collectivism of the Maoist era was supplanted by an upscale entrepreneurial ethos labeled "socialism with Chinese characteristics." For some Chinese this meant new and unprecedented opportunities for upward mobility; for others it meant rising personal vulnerability and marginalization. Today, a scant two decades after Mao's death, few traces of the Chairman's essential zeitgeist remain. Maoism, the spartan, puritanical credo fashioned by a small band of dedicated revolutionaries in the 1930s and 1940s, is moribund. - Preface.