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
From Publishers Weekly
In an epic biography, Short draws on a wealth of hitherto untapped sources to fashion an uncanny portrait of Mao Zedong. His Mao is a warrior-poet who gradually lost vital components of his humanity in his exclusive devotion to a cause. By Short's reckoning, Mao's megalomaniacal ambition led to such disasters as the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960), the collectivization and production drive that ended in apocalyptic failure as 20 million Chinese starved to death, and the chaos of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1969), during which hundreds of thousands were tortured, arrested or executed. Short (The Dragon and the Bear), who has lived in China, tries hard to judge Mao in a Chinese rather than Western context, noting that Mao presided over an "era when China's history was so compressed that changes which, in the West, had taken centuries to accomplish, occurred in a single generation." Though Short describes Mao as a "visionary, statesman, political and military strategist of genius," he also points out that Mao's rule "brought about the deaths of more of his own people than any other leader in the history of any country in the world." And yet he concludes by distinguishing Mao's culpability from that of Stalin and Hitler, evoking the distinction in Western law "between murder, manslaughter, and death caused by negligence." Short's dramatic biography will reward readers with its fresh perspectives on China's civil war, Mao's treacherous relations with Stalin, party infighting and the power struggle following Mao's death. It not only sheds valuable light on Mao's character but also serves as an illuminating and sweeping history of modern China. Photos. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
See all Editorial Reviews
(245)
$12.89
(30)
(25)
