Mao

The Real Story

Alexander V. Pantsov, Steven I. Levine

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781451654486
• eBook ISBN:
  9781451654493
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Biographies politiques

This major new biography of Mao uses extensive Russian documents previously unavailable to biographers to reveal surprising details about Mao’s rise to power and his leadership in China.

Mao Zedong was one of the most important figures of the twentieth century, the most important in the history of modern China. A complex figure, he was champion of the poor and brutal tyrant, poet and despot.

Pantsov and Levine show Mao’s relentless drive to succeed, vividly describing his growing role in the nascent Communist Party of China. They disclose startling facts about his personal life, particularly regarding his health and his lifelong serial affairs with young women. They portray him as the loyal Stalinist that he was, who never broke with the Soviet Union until after Stalin’s death.

Mao brought his country from poverty and economic backwardness into the modern age and onto the world stage. But he was also responsible for an unprecedented loss of life. The disastrous Great Leap Forward with its accompanying famine and the bloody Cultural Revolution were Mao’s creations. Internationally Mao began to distance China from the USSR under Khrushchev and shrewdly renewed relations with the U.S. as a counter to the Soviets. He lived and behaved as China’s last emperor.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Cast of Characters
• Note on the Spelling of Chinese Words
• Maps
• Introduction: Myths and Realities
• Part One: The Apprentice
• Part Two: The Revolutionary
• Part Three: The Dictator
• Epilogue
• Photographs
• Acknowledgments
• Illustration Credits
• Appendix 1: Mao Zedong’s Chronology
• Appendix 2: Mao Zedong’s Genealogy
• About Alexander V. Pantsov and Steven I. Levine
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright