Mao Zedong was a defining figure of the twentieth century. Military strategist, statesman, fiendishly clever politician, philosopher and poet, he transformed China and changed the world. This meticulously researched account draws on extensive interviews conducted in China over the past decade, and on a wealth of previously secret documentary material that has become available since Mao's death, to present for the first time a complete portrait of this bewilderingly complex and versatile leader.
The book traces Mao's development from idealistic student to visionary despot whose epic struggle to build a revolutionary realm of Red Virtue took the lives of more of his subjects than did any other leader in human history - Hitler and Stalin included. Mao's decisive role in the outbreak of the Korean War is revealed. The great political movements that followed - the Hundred Flowers, the Great Leap Forward and the cataclysmic upheaval of the Cultural Revolution - were not aberratons of an elderly leader's waning powers - but the logical, inevitable consequence of the deeply held ideas of a lifetime. No man has so profoundly influenced the fate of China's people since the First Emperor of Qin unified the country and built the Great Wall 2000 years ago.
