The World Turned Upside Down, Yang Jisheng
The World Turned Upside Down, Yang Jisheng
List: $29.99 | Sale: $21.00
Club: $14.99

The World Turned Upside Down
A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution

Author: Yang Jisheng, Stacy Mosher, Guo Jian

Narrator: Nancy Wu

Unabridged: 26 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 03/30/2021


Synopsis

As a major political event and a crucial turning point in the history of the People's Republic of China, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) marked the zenith as well as the nadir of Mao Zedong's ultra-leftist politics. Reacting in part to the Soviet Union's "revisionism" that he regarded as a threat to the future of socialism, Mao mobilized the masses in a battle against what he called "bourgeois" forces within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This ten-year-long class struggle on a massive scale devastated traditional Chinese culture as well as the nation's economy.

Following his groundbreaking and award-winning history of the Great Famine, Tombstone, Yang Jisheng here presents the only history of the Cultural Revolution by an independent scholar based in mainland China, and makes a crucial contribution to understanding those years' lasting influence today.

The World Turned Upside Down puts every political incident, major and minor, of those ten years under extraordinary and withering scrutiny, and arrives in English at a moment when contemporary Chinese governance is leaning once more toward a highly centralized power structure and Mao-style cult of personality.

About Yang Jisheng

Yang Jisheng was born in 1940, joined the Communist Party in 1964, and worked for the Xinhua News Agency from January 1968 until his retirement in 2001. He is now a deputy editor at Yanhuang Chunqiu (Chronicles of History), an official journal that regularly skirts censorship with articles on controversial political topics. He is the author of the book Tombstone.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jonathan on September 08, 2021

I like books that have a history of their own — Yang Jisheng's The World Turned Upside Down definitely has its own story, starting with the fact that Jisheng was a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) member who for many decades worked for Xinhua, the party's official news network. There is also the fact t......more

Goodreads review by Alex on March 28, 2021

The historian's role is the authority to censor history. That is to say, they sift through the facts and recollections left behind by past to assemble a story of what is important, and what isn't. The same could be said of the editors of this book, who had to condense and translate a 1600 page book......more

Goodreads review by Marks54 on April 03, 2021

Yang Jisheng is a journalist who grew up and worked in China. I recently finished his book on the great famine in China in 1958. “The World Turned Upside Down” is a history of “The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” a time of unbelievable political turmoil that last from 1966 until Mao’s death i......more