Title: The mao-maoing of Mao
Review: Unfortunately, this exhaustive tattle-tale of Mao has all the earmarks of an insider's pisstake on a former hero with whom the biographer became disillusioned. Author Jung Chang was a Red Guard at the age of 15, but grew to despise the party and its leader, as is made abundantly clear in this hideously revisionist examination of the Chinese Communist revolution. The obivious problem is that neither Chang nor collaborator Haliday are particularly distinguised historians, nor do they prove up to the task of taking on the monumental historical figure of enormous complexity that was the real Mao. Having lived a third of my life in East Asia, I am acutely aware of what passes for scholarship there but what is often merely biased translation of anecdotal heresay. I suspect that much of this book consists of just that, and not much more.
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