women in 20th century China – her grandmother, mother, and herself. Chang paints a vivid portrait of the political and military turmoil of China in this period, from the marriage of her grandmother to a warlord, to her mother's experience of Japanese-occupied Jinzhou during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and her own experience of the effects of Mao's policies of the 1950s and 1960s. Wild Swans was translated into 38 languages and sold 20 million copies, receiving praise from authors such as J. G. Ballard. It is banned in mainland China, though many pirated versions circulated, as are translations in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Mao: The Unknown Story Chang's 2005 work, a biography of Mao, was co-authored with her husband Jon Halliday and portrays Mao in an extremely negative light. The couple traveled all over the world to research the book, which took 12 years to write. They interviewed hundreds of people who had known Mao, including George H. W. Bush, Henry Kissinger, and Tenzin Gyatso, the Dalai Lama. Kissinger called it "grotesque in that it depicts Mao as a man without any qualities." Later, he described it in his book On China as "one-sided but often thought-provoking." Among their criticisms of Mao, Chang and Halliday argue that despite his having been born into a relatively rich peasant family, he had little well-informed concern for the long-term welfare of the Chinese peasantry. They hold Mao responsible for the famine resulting from the Great Leap Forward and state that he had created the famine by exporting food when China had insufficient grain to feed its own people. They also write that Mao had arranged for the arrests and murders of many of his political opponents, including some of his personal friends, and they argue that he was a far more tyrannical leader than had previously been thought. Mao: The Unknown Story became a best-seller, with UK sales alone reaching 60,000 in six months. Academics and commentators wrote reviews ranging from praise to criticism. Professor Richard Baum said that it had to be "taken very seriously as the most thoroughly researched and richly documented piece of synthetic scholarship" on Mao. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that while few commentators disputed it, "some of the world's most eminent scholars of modern Chinese history" had referred to the book as "a gross distortion of the records." Historian Rebecca Karl summarized its negative reception, writing, "According