China Books, I · Sep 1, 09:55 PM
I got a copy of Mao: The Unknown Story to give to my father for Christmas, but then never gave it to him and so after a few months, I went and read it myself.
It’s been extremely controversial among people who care about biographies of Mao (you can watch the argument rage on the discussion pages for Mao and the book on Wikipedia).
I have no real basis for evaluating either side but it seemed to me that (i) there was a lot of genuinely new information presented, primarily from the recently-opened archives of the old U.S.S.R. and (ii) the portrait of Mao-the-person, one of pure malevolent selfishness, didn’t seem plausible (in contrast to say, Solzhenitsyn—who had plenty of reason to hate Stalin—making him understandable as a human in The First Circle.)
Since I enjoyed it and felt I had learned a lot, I decided to pick up a few other biographies to get a broader context. I got Spence’s Mao Zedong a short book in the concise Penguin Live series and Short’s much longer Mao: A life (note to self: do not name any biographies I write, _[Name]: A Life_).
Both had a similar tone and the picture of Mao that emerged from both was similar. I felt like reading all three gave me enough perspective to triangulate a little. (Spence’s book, despite his pre-eminence as an historian of China, was just too short and skipped over too many significant periods, to be particularly useful on its own).
And so these made me want to read about China more generally …
