Mao - Jonathan D Spence

A biography that penetrates Mao's rhetoric and infamous self-will to distil an intimate portrait of a man as withdrawn and mysterious as the emperors he disdained.

From humble origins in the provinces, Mao Zedong rose to absolute power, unifying with an iron fist a vast country torn apart by years of weak leadership, foreign imperialism and war. In this sharply drawn account Jonathan Spence, award-winning historian and author of acclaimed books about the old and the new China, brings to life this modern day emperor and the tumultuous era that he did so much to shape. He presents Mao as a 'Lord of Misrule', who deliberately turned upside-down the traditional hierarchies of Chinese society. Spence captures Mao in all his paradoxical grandeur and sheds light on the radical transformation he unleashed that still reverberates in China today.

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.