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Mao: A Life Paperback – February 1, 2001
| Philip Short (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
- Print length824 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHolt Paperbacks
- Publication dateFebruary 1, 2001
- Dimensions6.09 x 1.55 x 9.22 inches
- ISBN-100805066381
- ISBN-13978-0805066388
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"A masterful biography. . . . The most measured, thoughtful and complete biography of Mao now available in English."--Kirkus Reviews
"Mao: A Life deserves to be the standard history. It is everything one could hope for: magisterial, beautifully written, excellently printed and rich in material from Mr. Short's own researches among those who knew and observed Mao."--Sunday Telegraph, London
"Draws on a wealth of hitherto untapped sources to fashion an uncanny portrait of Mao Zedong. . . . Short's dramatic biography will reward readers with its fresh perspective 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."--Publishers Weekly
"Beautifully written, grippingly readable . . . a formidable piece of research, which wears its learning so lightly you can hardly feel it."--Terry Eagleton, The Independent
"Wonderfully readable and rich . . . he tells the story superbly."--The Guardian
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Holt Paperbacks; Reprint edition (February 1, 2001)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 824 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0805066381
- ISBN-13 : 978-0805066388
- Item Weight : 2 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.09 x 1.55 x 9.22 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #4,635,809 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #19,486 in Political Leader Biographies
- #62,590 in Historical Biographies (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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The chapters on Mao's childhood and youth are particularly interesting. Short shows us how a well-to-do peasant with one or two farm hands lived at the end of the 19th century, and how an eldest son (Mao) was expected to behave. He shows us what a large Chinese town looked like at the turn of the 19th/20th century and how a young man would have felt seeing it for the first time. Short forces us to remember the obvious: at 14 years old, Mao was a boy, albeit a bright one.
A good example of the insights Short gives us can be found in his treatment of Mao's schooling. Mao was taught to read, write, and think in a traditional Confucian village school. The loud and mindless rote repetition methods worked, but they impress neither the author nor the reader. The insight we get from Short's presentation is that youths who in the 1960s memorized Mao's Little Red Book were following the same pedagogy, substituting Mao for Confucius, and youth groups for village schools.
As an example of realism, Short deflates some of the sex scandals around Mao. Yes, Mao enjoyed the company of young women, but these were enthusiastic communist girls, more like rock groupies than members of an imperial harem.
Where the book loses its balance is that not enough is made of Mao's real failures, both as a leader and as a human being. Short faces these failures square on, but late and he does not give them nearly enough emphasis. Short's evaluation of Mao as being not as bad as Hitler or Stalin fails to convince us, perhaps because the effect Mao had on China was as bad as Stalin's on Russia: millions of dead and a crippled economy that could not sustain the population.
Repeatedly, Short makes the mistake of describing what Mao is doing in his career in the early CCP without giving us necessary background about the other important figures in the founding and then operating of the CCP in cooperation with the Comintern in Russia. Because he doesn't explain this, we can't understand what internal communist politics are like, which severely hampers the rest of the book. Since most of Mao's later power comes from the hold he acquires over the CCP, it would help if we understood clearly how this came to be!
Thus, this biography focuses too much on historical events without adequate descriptions of the mechanisms of power that cause the events!
On the other hand, the historical narrative is quite well handled; hence three stars . . .
Having read works on Zhou Enlai, Jiang Jieshi / Chiang Kaishek, and Zhao Ziyang that seemed devoid of enough living detail for a reader to derive motivations from, this book is completely overloaded with such detail. As I said, this can be a little disconcerting at times, but after finishing it, few readers would have chosen any other style, having come away with an insanely definitive portrait of Mao Zedong.
Top reviews from other countries
I would thoroughly recommend this book. I knew very little of mao or China before I read it, and I have finished it much better informed.
The one attempt I did make previously to read a book about China was “Mao the untold story “. What an appalling book that was. About as far away from proper history as Harry Potter. If you want to read a totally biased, poorly research, bigoted polemic then read that book. If you want to read proper history – read this.
Mao needs to be dethrowned and his communist party with him, and this is the book to do it. The need is all the more urgent given China's rise in the world and its attempts to portray itself as benign. But remember the Communist Party is still the predominant forced in that country, determined as are all despotic regimes, to cling to power at what ever the cost - to others.









