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Mao: The Unknown Story Paperback – 4 Jan. 2007

by Jon Halliday (Author), Jung Chang (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 1,306 ratings
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The most authoritative life of Mao ever written, by the bestselling author of Wild Swans, Jung Chang and her husband, historian Jon Halliday.

Based on a decade of research, and on interviews with many of Mao's close circle in China who have never talked before, and with virtually everyone outside China who had significant dealings with him, this is the most authoritative life of Mao ever written. It is full of startling revelations, exploding the myth of the Long March, and showing a completely unknown Mao: he was not driven by idealism or ideology; his intimate and intricate relationship with Stalin went back to the 1920s, ultimately bringing him to power; he welcomed Japanese occupation of much of China; and he schemed, poisoned and blackmailed to get his way.
After Mao conquered China in 1949, his secret goal was to dominate the world. In chasing this dream he caused the deaths of 38 million people in the greatest famine in history. In all, well over 70 million Chinese perished under Mao's rule, in peacetime.

Combining meticulous history with the story-telling style of Wild Swans, this biography makes immediate Mao's roller-coaster life, as he intrigued and fought every step of the way to force through his unpopular decisions. Mao's character and the enormity of his behaviour towards his wives, mistresses and children are unveiled for the first time.

This is an entirely fresh look at Mao in both content and approach. It will astonish historians and the general reader alike.

‘This a bombshell of a book’, Chris Patten, The Times

‘The first great political biography of the twenty-first century’ Spectator

Previous page
  1. Print length
    992 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Vintage
  4. Publication date
    4 Jan. 2007
  5. Dimensions
    13 x 4.6 x 20 cm
  6. ISBN-10
    0099507374
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0099507376
  8. See all details
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From the Publisher

Vintage Brand: Read Boldly, Think Differently.

Product description

Review

The first great political biography of the twenty-first century -- Frank Johnson ― Spectator

This is a bombshell of a book... Jung Chang and Jon Halliday have done this extraordinary country a huge service with this book, which will one day be read as widely within China as it will deservedly be in the outside world -- Chris Patten ― The Times

Chang and Halliday cast new and revealing light on nearly every episode in Mao's tumultuous life... Magnificent... It is a stupendous work -- Michael Yahuda ― Guardian

Devastating... Awesome... Mesmerising... The most powerful, compelling and revealing political biography of modern times. Few books are destined to change history, but this one will -- George Walden ― Daily Mail

A triumph. It is a mesmerising portrait of tyranny, degeneracy, mass murder and promiscuity, a barrage of revisionist bombshells, and a superb piece of research. This is the first intimate, political biography of the greatest monster of them all -- Simon Sebag Montefiore ― Sunday Times

From the Publisher

The most authoritative life of Mao ever written, by the bestselling author of Wild Swans and her husband

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; Reprint edition (4 Jan. 2007)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 992 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0099507374
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0099507376
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13 x 4.6 x 20 cm
  • Customer reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 1,306 ratings

About the authors

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  1. Jon Halliday

    Jon Halliday

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  2. Jung Chang

    Jung Chang

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    Jung Chang (simplified Chinese: 张戎; traditional Chinese: 張戎; pinyin: Zhāng Róng; Wade–Giles: Chang Jung, Mandarin pronunciation: [tʂɑ́ŋ ɻʊ̌ŋ], born 25 March 1952) is a Chinese-born British writer now living in London, best known for her family autobiography Wild Swans, selling over 10 million copies worldwide but banned in the People's Republic of China.

    Her 832-page biography of Mao Zedong, Mao: The Unknown Story, written with her husband, the Irish historian Jon Halliday, was published in June 2005.

    Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Guy Aitchison from London, UK (Names not numbers Uploaded by Snowmanradio) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

    See more on the author's page
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Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
1,306 global ratings

Top reviews from United Kingdom

Gazza
5.0 out of 5 stars Mao: The Unknown Story
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 March 2024
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This is a wonderful biography by Jung Chang. Well written, detailed, and highly engaging throughout; it is a text I would recommend.

I hope you find my review helpful.
2 people found this helpful
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janice macpherson
5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 March 2024
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Very informative and interesting.
One person found this helpful
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Scott Ballantyne
4.0 out of 5 stars A Mao view from inside China
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 November 2013
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I have lived in China for almost 20 years, and what I have learned about Mao in that time has been totally shattered by this book. There is no doubt that the 10 years of research that Chang & Halliday put into this book has produced a first class piece of work. It brings to light so very much that is unknown or, often the case in China, untold. The Long March, The Great Leap Forward, The Cultural Revolution and much more were all made far more believable than what we may otherwise have thought of those times. The details and interviews in the book add great weight to the destruction of the myth that has become Mao.

There were times as I worked my way through this heavy book that I felt the bias towards Mao became too much of a driving force for the authors. However, the more I read, the more I believed. The book also brought me to question how such a nation could respond in the way that it did to Mao's many cruel tactics and how people could become implicit in it.

Anyone who has an interest in China and it's history would greatly benefit from reading Mao - The Unknown Story. They will learn not just about Mao, but of many other famous and infamous people of that time, along with a deeper understanding of the psyche of the Chinese people before and after the Communist Party came to rule.

Not a comfortable read, by any measure, but an extremely valuable one.
14 people found this helpful
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Poldy
5.0 out of 5 stars When People are a Natural Resource
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 June 2005
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To the outside world, Mao was another charismatic, ideological leader, like Stalin and Hitler. The truth, as usual, is far more complicated and bizarre, not to say appalling. Unlike his fellow murderous ideologues, Mao actually had no real interest or belief in the ideology he espoused: his interest was simply in whatever would grant him more power and cement his position as leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and, he intended and schemed, eventually the entire world.
Mao's Communists seized power from Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists, a change of rule which most of the population greeted with enthusiasm, believing as many did that Chiang's government was corrupt and power-hungry. From the moment he assumed power right up until his death, Mao was interested in one thing, and one thing only: keeping hold of power.
How he did this makes fascinating and often uncomfortable reading. Although he himself had been born a peasant, he had no interest in the welfare of the peasantry of his country, often telling his closest associates that a few million deaths meant little. As a way of maintaining power, Mao had the dream of gaining nuclear weapons. In what must be a manoeuvre unique amongst even the most insane of world leaders, he actually manipulated both his allies (and his allies were only ever allies for as long as they could be useful to him) and his enemies at the same time. He instigated wars in Korea, Vietnam and Taiwan, correctly predicting that the US would threaten to use nuclear weapons against China. Mao then told Stalin that he, Stalin, having signed the mutual-defence pact with China, would have to retaliate, thus causing a Third War world with nuclear weapons. Stalin, then, had little choice but to hand over the know-how to construct nuclear weapons. Mao thus shrewdly manipulated the US into threatening nuclear war in order to manipulate the USSR into giving him what he wanted. He also made it clear to his closest allies that he would be perfectly happy with a Third World War.
Moa made it clear that he could beat the Americans in a war because he had one thing they lacked: an inexhaustible supply of expendable soldiers. It was this callous disregard for life - and the life even of his own people - that set apart Mao's reign. He even encouraged other totalitarian leaders to be more ruthless, in his mould. Over the years, China gave out millions of tons of food in aid to other countries - many with a higher standard of living than his own people. This aid caused famine on a massive scale, resulting in over 22 millions deaths in one year alone.
As with Stalin, terror on a massive scale was Mao's key to power but, unlike both Hitler and Stalin, Mao liked to have his worst crimes carried-out in public, where they would act as a deterrent to the whole population. There was no fear that the outside world would find out, since all forms of media were strictly controlled, and the rare visits by foreigners were carefully organised so that no word of his murderous ways could escape.
Chung and Haliday have done a sterling job of presenting the true story of this terrible, vicious man. Their hatred of the man and the regime is clear, but a bare presentation of the facts is enough to instil this feeling in the reader. This deserves to become the standard reference work.
134 people found this helpful
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J. Duducu
5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 March 2008
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This seems to be a book where you either love it or hate it. I guess if you want a dry account about the rise of communism in China then look else where, perhaps do a PhD on the subject but I actually wanted to read a book that was well written and I wasn't disappointed.

To challenge some of the complaints against the book, actually no most people don't know Mao was "evil". If anyone knows anything about him they probably think he "helped" modernise China. He isn't seen as the cold hearted dictator who didn't have a problem seeing millions of his own people starve to death under his regime. Indeed before I read this I thought the cultural revolution was just that rather than a Stalinist style purge.

The sheen of respectability modern China has created and the fact that they do owe it all to Mao means that very few people care to point the rather brutal facts that Mao killed more people than anyone else in history and the vast majority of his "struggles" were made up propaganda. I think the elder statesmen known this but are forced to continue the lie but that means there are billions out there who still see him as a "great leader".

The fact that this book does have passion shouldn't be confused with Jung Chang getting the facts wrong. Her research is formidable and while I have to take her points on trust I very much doubt any of it is made up.

The reason why the Nazi regime is seen as the most evil in history is for 2 reasons, 1 they helpfully documented everything and 2 it was successfully dismantled leading to the next generation admitting it was wrong. However if killing people is "bad" then the Soviet Union and Maoist China were far worse and yet this is not widely known. They get away with it because documentation has been destroyed and of course the present regimes don't want to tarnish their own history. So a passionate book that points out all of Mao's flaws is an essential read. Add to that the fact it is well written well researched with a clear structure make this a must own book.

If you liked this there's more historical debate and fun at @HistoryGems on Facebook and Twitter
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Top reviews from other countries

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Jankowski, Marianne
5.0 out of 5 stars Reiner Horror.
Reviewed in Germany on 4 September 2023
Verified Purchase
Was man liest, ist z. T. kaum zu ertragen, aber die Quellen sind offenbar völlig verlässlich. Selbst heute müssen noch Zeitzeugen leben. Ein Kritiker nennt es `a bombshell of a book'! Und wirklich, man fühlt sich nach der Lektüre einiger Passagen fast körperlich verwundet.
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L
5.0 out of 5 stars L'opium des gauchistes
Reviewed in France on 29 August 2023
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Ouvrage remarquable confirmant les travaux de Simon Leys, la bête noire de la presse bien pensante aux ordres comme libération ou le monde. Simon Leys a chèrement payé son intégrité, puisque le CNRS, repère de gauchistes, a refusé son recrutement pour des raisons purement idéologiques.
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martini
5.0 out of 5 stars Very detailed account of the life of Mao
Reviewed in Italy on 3 April 2023
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The author goes deep into the life of Mao scrapping the official portrait and describing Chairman Mao as an selfish cold individual. The most interesting part is that Communism wasn't something Mao was really interested in, but rather used it to gain absolute control and dominion on others.
A must read for the those who like political science and history.
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RAFAEL
5.0 out of 5 stars The true Mao
Reviewed in Mexico on 6 November 2019
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The true Mao nude and real ,the serial criminal of the China Revolution .
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Ricardo Mena Cuevas
5.0 out of 5 stars Entretenido e históricamente detallado
Reviewed in Spain on 11 September 2020
Verified Purchase
Frente a otras obras sobre el dictador, esta ofrece un texto que
se deja leer de principio a fin y que es históricamente fiable.

Uno entra en el texto, lo transita horrorizado, y sale de él
con la sensación de que no se podría haber escrito mejor.

Altamente recomendable.
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