Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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644 of 679 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not History, 10 Feb 2007
All history is biased because we observe objective facts through subjective prisms, and because history's real value is interpretation, which is by its nature personal. However, some histories are more biased than others. This one doesn't even attempt to be fair. Its judgements are so extreme that they undermine the reliability of a massive, indeed impressive, body of research. Unreliability makes for poor history. What a waste of so much energy, labor, and potential! Yes, we all know that Mao was evil and the biggest mass murderer in history, surpassing even Stalin and Hitler. We also know that Mao would still have been a disgusting human being even had his politics been admirable, and none of us would have liked to have him home for dinner. Certainly not I. There is no need to excuse or romanticize anything about Mao. He was bad. But his successes were stunning and world-shaking, not only uniting China but freeing it from foreign control, creating the industrial base that allowed the economy to flourish under a less bandit-like regime, and making China a world power to be reckoned with. We are still dealing with the consequences. Does the end justify the means? Of course not. But there should be room in the authors' model for considering political brilliance or anything else positive. There isn't. They see just will, luck, cunning and ruthlessness. And they see everybody else as just gullible, even Chou En Lai. Can it be so simple? The book goes further. It attributes all evil anywhere in Asia like the Korean and Vietnam Wars solely to Mao. Wow! That's a lot of power! I didn't realize he was omnipotent. (Doesn't the looney left make the same assumptions about the CIA?) There is no subtlety in this investigation, and no sense that either human beings or historical causes can in any way be complex. This book is simplistic, simple-minded, anti-intellectual, and juvenile. It is not history. It is catharsis.
A word on style. People in this book don't just disappear; they "disappear from the face of the earth." This book reads like a seventh grade composition drawn from "Dial a Cliché." The editors couldn't improve the poor historiography, but they certainly could have done something about the pedestrian prose. Depravity, after all, can be interesting, at least in small doses. These authors make it dull.
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729 of 769 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Totalitarian Mode of Analysis, 27 Feb 2007
Jung Chang's young intellect was formed in an environment where totalitarian propaganda substituted for reason and evidence. After she came west, she was unable to make the adjustment. She still thinks and argues the same way. Her one-sided ram-it-down-your-throat approach, her strained interpretations, and her outright distortion of sources are the very characteristics of Maoist propaganda. She has learned nothing. This approach, and her endless repetition, make it clear that she does not trust the reader to make up his or her own mind. She should stick to reminiscences, at which she is adept, and leave history to competent historians. There are much better arguments against Mao than this. Philip Short, in just one example, makes an equally scathing case against Mao, but uses reason and an honest appraisal of sources. It is a compelling case. Chang's totalitarian mode of argument is so silly that it actually undermines the case against Mao by making it the subject of mockery. She thus gives comfort to the Maoists. Nobody except fanatics can take this book seriously, and the case against Mao should be taken seriously. As for Halliday, he should know better. "What does it profit a man...?"
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189 of 203 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Revolutionary book, doubtful claims, 21 Jun 2006
I applaud the authors' efforts in producing a sweeping study of Mao and attempting to uncover many hitherto unknown aspects of his fascinating life. `Facts' surrounding the Long March, such as the famous Luding Bridge heroics, are exposed as being untrue. And claims about the engineered killings of more than 70 million Chinese and the often gruesome nature of their deaths take us to a whole new level of understanding about Mao's megalomania and inhumanity. These chilling revelations are all the more absorbing in an age where we're being made increasingly aware of state-engineered brutality both past and present. Reading this book (and accepting its claims wholesale) will revolutionise the way you think about Mao and such events as the Long March and the `Great Leap Forward'.
Yet the main problem with this book lies precisely in how far we can accept its claims. Many of the books assertions can be criticised for being exaggerated or highly speculative. The book's sources, for one, have been criticised for being unreliable or unverifiable. The historian Philip Short has also contended that the book's one-sided emphasis on Mao obscures the role played by the Communist party in perpetrating the said atrocities.
No specialist of Chinese history myself, I nonetheless found the claims a little too sensational and the writing too overwrought in places. Mao the man comes across as an utterly self-absorbed, power-crazed, pitiless beast whose one-dimensionality seems too much like a caricature at times. As with other similar books I've read, the authors' profound emotional engagement with the subject (ten years of research, interviewing hundreds of eyewitnesses etc.) seems to have gotten in the way of sober analysis.
At over 800 pages long this is not a short book by any measure. But it is written for a general audience and so should be accessible enough to most readers. If the writing doesn't capture you attention, the gripping narrative most certainly will. Just bear in mind the scepticism that book's claims have received from academic circles. Checking these claims against the work of other experts in the field will probably be a good idea; and will most certainly be my next port-of-call.
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