
Mao: The Unknown Story
Jon Halliday
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
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About Jon Halliday
Reviews for Mao: The Unknown Story
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
Jung Chang and Jon Halliday's meticulously researched biography explodes every unquestioned truth... An extraordinary exercise in iconoclasm that is likely to play its own part in changing history
Isabel Hilton
New Statesman
Awesome yet immensely readable
Ruth Rendell
Guardian
What Chang and Halliday have done is immense and surpasses, as a biography, all that has gone before
Jonathan Mirsky
Independent
This book's strength is [Chang and Halliday's] understanding of the importance of bringing the human, or inhuman, alive in Mao's story. This, they do brilliantly
Richard McGregor
Financial Times
The authors shred the myths in which Mao's national and international reputation rested... Jung Chang and John Halliday have done this extraordinary country a huge service with this book, which will one day be read as widely inside China as it will deservedly be in the outside world
Chris Patten
The Times