The Unknown Story Mao by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday
1 December 2006I am already a fan of Jun Chang, having loved her book WILD SWANS which I read years back. I am also an amateur Sinologist, and for years have been interested in all Chinese History, but certainly also reading a lot on the communist years and Chairman Mao. I have read many books on the communist period in China, and all the deaths that Mao caused, including the book by his personal physician, and I have to say none have been so brutal as this book. It is an engaging and interesting read, though completely brutal in it’s details of Mao’s life from his humble beginnings to his running of China and the brutal deaths of hundreds of millions of his own people in his quest for ultimate power.
If you are interested in the history of China, and especially of China since the Communist takeover then this history of Mao, the last Emperor in China who caused more horror and mayhem to his own people then this is a must read.
Honestly I can bet that this book is banned in China, and won’t be very popular among Chinese born in China in recent years (I honestly don’t think my ex girlfriend from China did not know much if anything about this period, and would probably not believe it). Well honestly if even half of this book is accurate then Mao in fact had more deaths in his own country from his authoritarian regime than either Stalin or even Hitler, and yet he is still revered by a huge population in the world.
As I said this book covers Mao from his Youth, and through his 2 marriages, and his struggles to take control of the Chinese communist party and to defeat not the Japanese but instead focusing on Chiang Kai Shek and not worrying about the Chinese. And then in his efforts to become a super power allowing untold Chinese to perish while Mao pushed to become world leader and to run his nuclear program to give China the bomb and make it a world power. It goes through all of his movements, each starving more people and putting him higher in control while destroying more and more of ancient China. And the book goes all the way through his meetings with Nixon, and his finally years when he started losing his control and those closest to him started to rebel.
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This is really a must read for anyone interested in China. This is a chilling picture of Chairman Mao that will blow away anyone who reads it.