In this dazzling blend of history, literature and politics, the world's pre-eminent historian of China explores the complex personality of Chairman Mao Zedong. Jonathan Spence penetrates Mao's rhetoric and infamous self-will to distil an intimate portrait of a man as withdrawn and mysterious as the emperors he disdained. How did this farm boy from the remote Hunan province, with a haphazard education and unexceptional talents, evolve from a rebel youth refusing the "legalised rape" of a bourgeois marriage, to the iron hand that devastated millions for so long?
This work masterfully illuminates Chairman Mao, examining the man who, at a watershed moment in history, turned the classic Chinese concept of reform through reversal into an endless adventure in upheaval, and considers why he is still remembered with hate, awe and even reverence.
