Mao: A Life by Philip Short

From the Publisher

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.

Sunday Telegraph (London) - John Simpson

Ecellent... deserves to be the standard history. This book is everything one could hope for: magisterial, beautifully written, excellently printed, and rich in material from Short's own researches among those who knew and observed Mao. Short's journalistic abilities have helped provide some of the best passages in this enlightening work.

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 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

"Mao is China, China is Mao" is the thesis of this rather lengthy yet well-written and -researched biography of the first leader of the Chinese Communist Party, in power from 1949 until his death in 1976. Interestingly, the sources Short uses, including eyewitness accounts by Agnes Smedley, Edgar Snow, and Sidney Rittenberg, generally are overlooked by China scholars in the United States because these individuals were known sympathizers to Chinese communism. In contrast to Jonathan Spence's recent biography on the same subject (Mao Zedong, LJ 9/15/99), Short's does not cite the latest research in the field but nonetheless presents remarkably similar conclusions about how Mao gained power in the Chinese civil war and maintained command during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the nature of Mao's intellectual shortcomings in the realm of economics, and how he eliminated individuals and groups that threatened his supreme authority. Like Spence's work and that of Jin Qiu (The Culture of Power, LJ 7/99), Short's discusses Mao's psychological state(s) and relationships with his wives (and other women) by placing them in the context of the pressures suffered by many in the long and turbulent periods of Chinese politics. In sum, Short (a former BCC correspondent in China who is married to a Chinese woman) soberly posits that Mao and his cohorts came to disregard human suffering. Recommended especially for academic libraries.--Peggy Spitzer Christoff, Oak Park, IL Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Booknews

Short, a British foreign correspondent who worked in China in the 1970s and early 1980s, offers the first full-length biography of the father of the People's Republic of China, based on extensive interviews conducted in China over the past decade and on documentary material, much of it only recently made available. Whatever one thinks of him or his politics, says Short, he has had more impact on China than anyone for 2,000 years. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Product Details

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents