A Life
The complete and accessible portrait of Mao Zedong, one of the defining figures of the twentieth century.
Military strategist, statesman, fiendishly clever politician, philosopher and poet, Mao transformed China and changed the world. The revolution he engineered dragged almost a quarter of the world's people out of medieval splendour and squalor into the modern age.
In this meticulously researched account, Philip Short draws on extensive interviews and on a wealth of previously secret documentary material to present for the first time a complete portrait of this bewilderingly complex and versatile leader. He traces Mao's development from idealistic student, dabbling in anarchism, to visionary despot whose epic struggle to build a revolutionary real of Red Virtue took the lives of more of his subjects than did any other leader in human history.
Short illuminates crucial episodes in Mao's life and career which until now have been deliberately obscured and he reveals Mao's decisive role in the outbreak of the Korean war. Readers are left to make up their own minds about this colossal figure.
