Mao: The Man Who Made China

by Philip Short

Overview

One of the great figures of the twentieth century, Chairman Mao looms irrepressibly over the economic rise of China. Mao Zedong was the leader of a revolution, a communist who lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, an aggressive and distrustful leader, and a man responsible for more civilian deaths than perhaps any other historical figure. Now, four decades after Mao's death, acclaimed biographer Philip Short presents a fully updated and revised edition of his ground-breaking and masterly biography. Vivid, uncompromising and unflinching, Short presents in one-volume the man behind the propaganda - his family, his beliefs and his horrors. In doing so he shows us both the human being Mao was, and the monster he became.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350376724
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	06/01/2023
Pages:	864
Sales rank:	635,915
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.50(h) x 2.15(d)

About the Author

Philip Short was for thirty years a foreign correspondent for the BBC, based in Washington, Moscow, Paris, Tokyo and Beijing. He lived and worked in China for two decades in the 1970s and 1980s, and has returbaned regularly to the country ever since. He is the author of acclaimed biographies of Mitterrand (A Study in Ambiguity, Random House, 2013) and Pol Pot (Anatomy of a Nightmare, Henry Holt, 2006).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ix

List of Maps xi

List of Illustrations xii

Note on Spelling and Pronunciation xvi

Chinese Views of Mac: Preface to the New Revised Edition xix

Prologue 1

1 A Confucian Childhood 17

2 Revolution 35

3 Lords of Misrule 47

4 A ferment of 'Isms' 74

5 The Comintern Takes Charge 107

6 Events Leading to the Horse Day Incident and its Bloody Aftermath 174

7 Out of the Barrel of a Gun 190

8 Futian: Loss of Innocence 255

9 Chairman of the Republic 274

10 In Search of the Grey Dragon: The Long March North 304

11 Yan'an Interlude: The Philosopher is King 338

12 Paper Tigers 402

13 The Sorcerer's Apprentice 433

14 Musings on Immortality 502

15 Cataclysm 523

16 Things Fall Apart 583

Epilogue 636

Afterword 643

Dramatis Personae 675

Notes 684

Index 801