“Since the spectacular success of Chang’s Crazy Swans we’ve waited impatiently on her behalf to filled with her husband this monumental study of China’s most notorious modern leader. The expectation has been that she’d rewrite modern Chinese history. The wait around has been worthwhile and the expectation justified. That is a bombshell of a book.”

-Chris Patten, the final governor of Hong Kong, in The Times (London)

Based on a decade of research and on interviews with a lot of Mao’s close circle on the subject of Mao: The Unknown Story in China who’ve never spoken before-and with virtually everyone outside China who experienced significant dealings with him-this is the most authoritative life of Mao ever written. It is filled with startling revelations, exploding the myth of the Long March, and displaying a completely unidentified Mao: he had not been driven by idealism or ideology; his romantic and intricate romantic relationship with Stalin went back towards the 1920s, ultimately bringing him to power; he welcomed Japanese occupation of much of China; and he schemed, poisoned and blackmailed to get his method. After Mao conquered China in 1949, his magic formula goal was to dominate the globe. In running after this fantasy he caused the deaths of 38 million people in the best famine in history. In all, more than 70 million Chinese perished under Mao’s rule-in peacetime.

Combining meticulous research with the story-telling design of Crazy Swans, this biography offers a harrowing portrait of Mao’s ruthless accumulation of force through the work out of terror: his first victims had been the peasants, then the intellectuals and, finally, the inner circle of his have advisors. The reader gets into the shadowy chambers of Mao’s courtroom and eavesdrops on the theatre in its hidden recesses. Mao’s character and the enormity of his behavior toward his wives, mistresses and children are unveiled for the first time.

This is a completely fresh look at Mao in both content and approach. It will astonish historians and the general reader alike.