In this blend of history, literature and politics, Jonathan Spence gets to the heart of the complex personality of Chairman Mao Zedong. The biography penetrates Mao's rhetoric and infamous self-will to distil an intimate portrait of a man as withdrawn and mysterious as the emperors he disdained.
Author Biography
Jonathan Spence is currently Sterling Professor of History at Yale University. In 1985 he was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Science and in 1988 he was named one of the Council of Scholars at the Library of Congress. He became an honorary professor at the University of Nanjing in 1994 and he is on the Governing Board of the Yale University Press.
Reviews
Balanced, reliable and drawing on the most up-to-date research ... Spence eschews any overall judgement. He lets the facts speak for themselves and they are extraordinary enough' - LITERARY REVIEW One of the greatest historians of China.
