Mao: The Real Story (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781451654486)

This "comprehensive, judicious, and finely detailed" (Roderick MacFarquhar, The New York Review of Books) biography of Mao Zedong traces how he created a totalitarian government even more destructive and extreme than Stalin's, while transforming China from an impoverished nation to a leading world power.

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 both a champion of the poor and a brutal tyrant, a poet and a despot. In this major new biography, the authors draw upon extensive Russian documents previously unavailable to reveal surprising details about Mao's rise to power, his leadership in China, and the true nature of his relationship with Stalin.

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 during the disastrous Great Leap Forward and the bloody Cultural Revolution. He lived and behaved as China's last emperor.

Mao is the full story of Mao's life and rule told as never before.

Author: Alexander V. Pantsov, Steven I. Levine
ISBN-10: 1451654480
ISBN-13: 9781451654486
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Language: English
Published: 10/29/2013
Pages: 784
Format: Paperback
Weight: 2.45lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 1.80d