Mao, Jung Chang
Mao, Jung Chang
6 Rating(s)
List: $32.86 | Sale: $23.01
Club: $16.43

Mao
The Unknown Story

Author: Jung Chang, Jon Halliday

Narrator: Robertson Dean

Unabridged: 30 hr 26 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/07/2006


Synopsis

“Ever since the spectacular success of Chang’s Wild Swans we have waited impatiently for her to complete with her husband this monumental study of China’s most notorious modern leader. The expectation has been that she would rewrite modern Chinese history. The wait has been worthwhile and the expectation justified. This is a bombshell of a book.”
–Chris Patten, the last governor of Hong Kong, in The Times (London)

Based on a decade of research and on interviews with many of Mao’s close circle in China who have never talked before–and with virtually everyone outside China who had significant dealings with him–this is the most authoritative life of Mao ever written. It is full of startling revelations, exploding the myth of the Long March, and showing a completely unknown Mao: he was not driven by idealism or ideology; his intimate and intricate relationship with Stalin went back to the 1920s, ultimately bringing him to power; he welcomed Japanese occupation of much of China; and he schemed, poisoned and blackmailed to get his way. After Mao conquered China in 1949, his secret goal was to dominate the world. In chasing this dream he caused the deaths of 38 million people in the greatest famine in history. In all, well over 70 million Chinese perished under Mao’s rule–in peacetime.

Combining meticulous research with the story-telling style of Wild Swans, this biography offers a harrowing portrait of Mao’s ruthless accumulation of power through the exercise of terror: his first victims were the peasants, then the intellectuals and, finally, the inner circle of his own advisors. The reader enters the shadowy chambers of Mao’s court and eavesdrops on the drama in its hidden recesses. Mao’s character and the enormity of his behavior toward his wives, mistresses and children are unveiled for the first time.

This is an entirely fresh look at Mao in both content and approach. It will astonish historians and the general reader alike.

About The Author

Jung Chang is the bestselling author of Wild Swans, which The Asian Wall Street Journal called the most widely read book about China, and Mao: The Unknown Story (with Jon Halliday), which was described by Time as “an atom bomb of a book.” Her most recent book is Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China. Her books have been translated into more than 40 languages and sold more than 15 million copies outside mainland China, where they are banned. She was born in China in 1952 and moved to Britain in 1978. She lives in London.Jon Halliday is a former senior visiting research fellow at King’s College, University of London. He has written or edited eight previous books, including Mao: The Unknown Story, Korea: The Unknown War, and The Artful Albanian: The Memoirs of Enver Hoxha. Robertson Dean has acted on- and off-Broadway and in many leading roles at regional theaters throughout the United States. His film work includes Star Trek: Nemesis and Vanilla Sky.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Natasha on February 03, 2012

I was very much looking forward to this highly touted book, as it's widely considered to be the most thorough and in depth study of Mao ever done. It's true, actually. The amount of detail is pretty incredible. The thing that has been turning me off of this book is that it falls victim a little too m......more

Goodreads review by James on May 07, 2010

This isn't balanced biography. This is more like character assassination. It reminded me of the harsh biographical treatment Albert Goldman gave Elvis Presley some years ago. Whatever detail of Mao's life Chang writes about, the negative aspects are emphasized. The facts of his marriages are glued t......more

Goodreads review by Andrew on August 18, 2007

This is a comprehensive hatchet job on the Western myth of Mao's "making of modern China". It should be read by everyone who grew up in the post-war years, with the recurrent fascination our society had with the internal convulsions of the "People's Republic" and its growing influence on its neighbo......more

Goodreads review by pinkgal on July 03, 2007

How do I review a book like this? I don't know, because I have decidedly mixed feelings about Mao myself. Jung Chang wrote the amazing "Wild Swans" biography/autobiography, but her voice there falls far short of the voice here. I'll be honest. It's very, very biased. She presents the work as *factua......more

Goodreads review by Liam on February 12, 2023

I think this book is wonderful, it may have flaws but the passion is both true and understandable. It is probably hard for those who did not grow up in the 1960s or 70s to understand just what a commanding figure Mao was, so many reporters, academics, left leaning philosophers, literatures and other......more


Quotes

"Chang and Halliday cast new and revealing light on nearly every episode in Mao's tumultuous life…a stupendous work and one hopes that it will be brought before the Chinese people, who still claim to venerate the man and who have yet to come to terms with their own history…"
-Michael Yahuda, The Guardian

"Jung Chang and Jon Halliday have not, in the whole of their narrative, a good word to say about Mao. In a normal biography, such an unequivocal denunciation would be both suspect and tedious. But the clear scholarship, and careful notes, of The Unknown Story provoke another reaction. Mao Tse-Tung's evil, undoubted and well-documented, is unequalled throughout modern history."
-Roy Hattersley, The Observer

"Ever since the spectacular success of Chang's Wild Swans we have waited impatiently for her to complete with her husband this monumental study of China's most notorious modern leader. The expectation has been that she would rewrite modern Chinese history. The wait has been worthwhile and the expectation justified. This is a bombshell of a book."
-Chris Patten, last British governor of Hong Kong, in The Times

"A triumph. It is a mesmerising portrait of tyranny, degeneracy, mass murder and promiscuity, a barrage of revisionist bombshells, and a superb piece of research."
-Simon Sebag Montefiore, The Sunday Times

"Jung Chang and Jon Halliday enter a savage indictment drawing on a host of sources, including important Soviet ones, to blow away the miasma of deceit and ignorance which still shrouds Mao's life from many Western eyes...Jung Chang delivers a cry of anguish on behalf of all of those in her native land who, to this day, are still not free to speak of these things."
-Max Hastings, The Sunday Telegraph

"Demonstrating the same pitilessness that they judge to be Mao's most formidable weapon, they unstitch the myths that sustained him in power for forty years and that continue to underpin China's regime…I suspect that when China comes to terms with its past this book will have played a role."
-Nicolas Shakespeare, Telegraph

"The detail and documentation are awesome. The story that they tell, mesmerising in its horror, is the most powerful, compelling, and revealing political biography of modern times. Few books are destined to change history, but this one will."
-George Walden, Daily Mail

"decisive biography…they have investigated every aspect of his personal life and career, peeling back the layers of lies, myths, and what we used to think of as facts…what Chang and Halliday have done is immense and surpasses, as a biography, everything that has gone before."
-Jonathan Mirsky, The Independent, Saturday

"written with the same deft hand that enlivened Ms. Chang's 1991 memoir, 'Wild Swans'…"
-The Economist