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The most authoritative life of the Chinese leader ever written,

Mao: The Unknown Story is 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. It is full of startling
revelations, exploding the myth of the Long March, and sho
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GENRES
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History 490 users
Paperback, 801 pages
Published
November 14th 2006
by Anchor Books
Biography 439 users
(first published September 1st 2002)
Cultural >
China 331 users
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ABOUT JUNG CHANG

See 1 question about Mao… Jung Chang

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LISTS WITH THIS BOOK Jung Chang (simplified Chinese: 张戎; traditional
Chinese: 張戎; pinyin: Zhāng Róng; Wade-Giles:
Chang Jung, born March 25, 1952 in Yibin,
Sichuan) is a Chinese-born British writer now
living in London, best known for her family
autobiography Wild Swans, selling over 10
million copies worldwide but banned in mainland
Best Books About China
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China.

713 books
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See also ユン チアン, 張戎.
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3.75
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Natasha
rated it
Dec 18, 2007
Recommends it for: history buffs

I was very much looking forward to this highly touted book, as it's widely
considered to be the most thorough and in depth study of Mao ever done.
It's true, actually. The amount of detail is pretty incredible.

The thing that has been turning me off of this book is that it falls victim a
little too much to the author's personal feelings for Mao. I understand that a
lot of what he did was atrocious. I just wish that I didn't feel like I was being
force fed the author's point of view quite so blata
...more
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Horace Derwent
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TRIVIA ABOUT MAO: THE UNKNOWN ...

2 trivia questions

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QUOTES FROM MAO: THE UNKNOWN ...

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“not his mother, nor did he hesitate to say
so.”
—
7 likes
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“In Mao’s relationship with his mother,
By clicking “Sign up” I agree to the Goodreads Terms of Service and confirm
that I am at least 13 years old. Read our Privacy Policy while she seems to have shown
unconditional love and indulgence for
him, his treatment of her combined
strong feelings with selfishness. In later
life, he told one of his closest staff a
revealing story: “When my mother was
dying, I told her I could not bear to see her
looking in agony. I wanted to keep a
beautiful image of her, and told her I
wanted to stay away for a while. My
mother was a very understanding person,
and she agreed. So the image of my
As we all know, he was the man who killed the most

mother in my mind has always been and

But many people might not know this:

still is today a healthy and beautiful one.”

The only right thing he ever did was DIE

On her deathbed, the person who took

Still there many many many many many people here are worshipping and
priority in Mao’s consideration was
adoring him, seeing him as a God

himself,”
—
3 likes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

More quotes…

Finally received the tome today thru Amazon.jp by a longtime shipping

freight, expensive and risky(you got it), but worthy and deserving

This book of untold stories of him tells the world a lot about(not only about
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the dictatorship ...more

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James Murphy
rated it
Jun 19, 2009

This isn't balanced biography. This is more like character assassination. It

reminded me of the harsh biographical treatment Albert Goldman gave Elvis
Presley some years ago. Whatever detail of Mao's life Chang writes about,
the negative aspects are emphasized. The facts of his marriages are glued
together with the ways he crippled them and damaged the wives. Writing
about his children, the author underlines the ways he mistreated them.
Every lash of the whip is here: not writing to his children
...more

43 likes ·  Like
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Jessica
marked it as aborted-efforts Aug 25, 2015

I can't decide whether to keep going with this book, which is one of the
most annoying biographies I've ever read. The tabloidish whiff of the
subtitle -- The Unknown Story! -- is misleading: this book should have been
called Mao: What a DICK! Its tone is bizarrely vitriolic and hysterical, as the
authors take every single conceivable opportunity to spell out after each
example that, see, look, Mao was a real DICK.

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Here's the thing: we already know that Mao was a dick! And if we somehow
didn't, s
...more

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Caroline
marked it as did-not-finish
 · 
review of another edition Jun 19, 2013
Recommended to Caroline by: Mikey B.

Okay, I put my hands up...this book has me defeated. At page 228 I am

giving up. It is just too dense, and too filled with battle and political strategy
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to be my cup of tea.

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I have however gleaned some interesting points from what I have read.
(view spoiler)
...more

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Mikey B.
rated it
Nov 04, 2014
Shelves:
biography, 20th-century-history, human-rights, china
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“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”

Quote of Mao Tse-tung

“Long Live Chairman Mao”

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“Chairman Mao Tse-tung is the Saviour of the Chinese People”

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During the 1960’s and ‘70’s Mao was a much revered world leader –
particularly adored by the college crowd (I know I was one of them) who put
Mao on a pedestal. He was placed among the great leaders of the 20th
Continue with Amazon
century like Gandhi. His stature in Western society was likely similar to that
of Stalin who was also glorified during the 1930’s and
...more

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Andrew Macneil
rated it
Aug
Already a member? Sign in 18, 2007
Recommends it for: Anyone interested in modern history
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This is a comprehensive hatchet job on
thatthe
I amWestern
at least 13 myth ofRead
years old. Mao's "making
our Privacy Policy
of modern China". It should be read by everyone who grew up in the post-
war years, with the recurrent fascination our society had with the internal
convulsions of the "People's Republic" and its growing influence on its
neighbours.

It is well written - I noticed a few repetitions, but nothing annoying, and it

kept my interest throughout.

I'm sure the passion that comes through the book's relentless examination
of Mao's beha
...more

28 likes ·  Like
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pinkgal
rated it
Jul 03, 2007
Shelves:
no_fiction_here

How do I review a book like this? I don't know, because I have decidedly
mixed feelings about Mao myself. Jung Chang wrote the amazing "Wild
Swans" biography/autobiography, but her voice there falls far short of the
voice here. I'll be honest. It's very, very biased. She presents the work as
*factual* when it's not actually quite that factual. Much of her
interpretation and statements are based off of things like, "a dear friend of
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Mao's said..." and yet, the friend is *not* named or referenced.
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David
rated it
Apr 12, 2012
Shelves:
books-i-hated

I should clarify my review; I majored in Chinese modern history and did my

thesis on historical revisionism and historiography of the Nanjing Massacre
(from both Chinese and Japanese perspectives). I loved Chang’s book Wild
Swans, but too much of this ‘biography’ is filled with personal invective
with questionable evidence. Mao was certainly a monster, and a perpetrator
of genocide, but too much of the author’s personal bias (and she does have
some very serious personal tragedy relating to Mao’s
...more

20 likes ·  Like
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Jeff Chappell
rated it
Mar 23, 2007
Recommends it for: anyone
Shelves:
nonfiction

I'm going to have to come back to this; it's an exhaustive read. I will say
this: I would have given it five stars but for the fact that the writing itself is
extremely textbookish. At times, reading it was a chore that ranks up there
Discover
with getting through John Galt's 60-page speech & Shrugged.
in Atlas read moreBut Mao
is so well researched and such an interesting topic, covering a fascinating
period in Chinese history ...

Update: If you really are a glutton for punishment and want to read what I
really thi
...more

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Czarny Pies
rated it
Sep 19, 2014
Recommends it for: Anyone interested
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to get better
Recommended to Czarny by: I read it in spite of all the negative reviews. No one
recommended it.
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I am giving this book four stars for two reasons. The first is that the
research effort by Ms. Chang was extraordinary. The second
Continue withisAmazon
that her
husband conducted exhaustive research in the Russian archives something
that I suspect no other Western academic following China would have been
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able to do. The result is a book which is rich in detail on with
Mao email
and which
presents the best description of Mao's relations with the Russians thus
providing the best explanation of how the communists were able
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Tom
rated it
Feb 02, 2009
Man, this was a 2 1/2 month project to slog through. That's not to say it isn't
a good book, I just had a hard time in the first half when we just have
example after example of Mao killing thousands of his own men because
he's either scared of losing power, scared of Stalin, scared of Chiang Kai-
Shek, or greedy for something or other. It actually gets sort of redundant.

The book really picks up in the second half when things get considerably
more interesting with the Russians and when, little by
...more

15 likes ·  Like
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Leslie
rated it
Feb 04, 2008
Shelves:
china-and-tibet

This book is anti-Mao, for sure, but from what I've read in other books, that
seems to be justified. Mao is responsible for the worst man-made famine in
all of history--30 million people died. He caused the deaths of more people
than Hitler and Stalin put together. A lot of people don't know that because
it isn't part of Western history, but it is true. My only problem with the book
was the exhaustive detail. Sometimes it was just too much. But I found it
well-researched and informative.
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Astrida
rated it

 · 
review of another edition Mar 25, 2020

Very My
much a history not only of China, but also of
Books the West.

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The Vintage edition (2007) seems somewhat shortened in comparison to
that of A. Knopf (2005). Mostly — a number of footnotes have not been
reprinted/been omitted (e.g. p. 225 with p.185, 247 with 203 ... respectively).

12 likes ·  Like
 · see review

Anna
rated it

 · 
review of another edition Aug 23, 2020
Recommended to Anna by: Helen S
Shelves:
nonfiction, overseas, biography

I was given a copy of 'Mao: The Unknown Story' for Christmas in 2016. I
read 200 pages during January 2017, found the Long March so depressing
that I put the book aside for more than three and half years, then read the
remaining 600 pages in two days. This isn't atypical behaviour for me and
also reflects the nature of the book. It is written in highly readable and
involving style, yet the content is horribly depressing. I have been very fond
of Jung Chang's writing since I came across Wild Swan
...more

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 · see review

Gary
rated it
Nov 23, 2017
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Along with Hitler, Stalin and Saddam Hussein, Mao Tse Tung was one of the
most evil men of the 20th century, as anyone with respect for human life
will attest.

The auhtors illustrate how Mao's thirst for blood is what led him to choose
the Communist Party, over the Nationalists because the Nationalists put
limits on the brutality their forces allowed and only the Communists could
provide him with a means to assuage his mania for murder and destruction.

From even before his participation in the civ

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Pamela
rated it
Apr 18, 2008
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china

Just like when I read Wild Swans byt Jung Chang, there were times when my
Continue
eyes almost crossed when she is writing of politics with Amazon
and military maneuvers.
However, I felt that anyone interested in 20th Century China should read
both. There has been some controversy about the accuracy of some of the
Sign up with email
information, but overall, from what I have read, there is some new
information that has been verified (Russia's involvement in Chinese politics
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during the civil war, for example).

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that I am at least 13 years old. Read our Privacy Policy
Sometimes, I think Jung C
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Mkp
rated it
Jan 25, 2009
Shelves:
asian-culture

At first, I was put off by the heavily polemical style and constant sneers at
Mao. But I pushed on, and I'm glad that I did. Read the book, not as
academic history or as a scientific investigation, but more as a bill of
indictment. Chang and Halliday spent ten years digging up an extraordinary
wealth of material, and I doubt anyone will ever match what they have done.
They had access to Russian archival material and various aging eye-
witnesses in China that have not been available to previous hi
...more

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Mark
rated it

 · 
review of another edition Jun 06, 2021
Mao Zedong is alone among the major tyrants of the 20th century never to
have faced a historical reckoning. While the crimes of Adolf Hitler’s regime
have been well documented and the Russians have at various times
acknowledged the famines and purges under Josef Stalin, the full extent of
the suffering inflicted by Mao remains uncertain. This is largely due to the
degree to which the Communist government in China today zealously
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protects his image, as though to question it is to undermine the fo
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John Farebrother
rated it
Jul 06, 2017

An excellent read - thorough, painstaking research and incisive insight

presented in a manner that tells the story of one of the leading historical
figures of the twentieth century. Even readers with little or no knowledge of
Chinese history will conclude this book with a thorough understanding of
how we got to where we are today in the Far East, and of the inside life of
this most evil of men. Like Hitler and Stalin, he not only wiped out entire
communities in their millions, but also tended to
...more

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Margitte
rated it
Jan 09, 2013
Shelves:
history, china-culture-history-politics, nonfiction, reviewed

Mao

Shocking, traumatizing, depressing, text-bookish but brilliant. This is the

sequal to Jung Chang's first international best seller, "Wild Swans - Three
Daughters of China".

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It was not an easy read and certainly a challenge to empathize with Jung
Chang's anger and open contempt for Mao. Her intense personal feelings
established this book as a personal journey of discovery which took her ten
years of intense research. Although most of the facts can be verified, there
are others, supplied by peo
...more

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Hana
is currently reading it
 · 
review of another edition Feb 12, 2019
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Shelves:
asia, east-europe-russia, history-and-bio

I'm currently reading The Gulag Archipelago Abridged An Experiment in

Continueimpassioned
Literary Investigation, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn brilliant, with Facebook
indictment of the Soviet system of suppression and imprisonment. This
paragraph from an NY Times review convinced me to read Jung Chang and
Continue with Amazon
Jon Halliday's biography of Mao next.

The authors assert, for example, that he was not in fact a

founding member of the Chinese Communist SignParty,
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as is widely
believed, and that the party was founded in 1920 rather than 19
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Elizabeth
rated it

 · 
review of another edition Jul 10, 2012
Shelves:
biography, espionage, politics, setting-1970s, chinese, genocide, setting-1910s,
setting-1920s, mental-illness, setting-1930s

Right, this is not an unbiased and objective look at the life of Mao. This is
the necessary counterpoint so that there might one day be an unbiased and
objective account of the life of Mao. This opened my eyes to just how
ignorant I am about a lot of the history of that region and the role of Mao
especially. The book opens with Chang positing that Mao killed more than
60 million of his own people, more than any other dictator during peace
time. He deliberated starved his own people, taking the h
...more

8 likes ·  Like
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Jeffrey Mollerup
rated it
Aug 08, 2010
I once owned a t-shirt that I bought while vacationing in China that had a
picture of Mao that is identical to the one on the cover of this book. Had I
known how narcissistic, evil, diabolical, cruel and ruthless this man really
was, I would have torn the shirt to shreds. I thought Hitler was evil...Mao Ze
Dong was responsible for at least 10 times the number of deaths that Hitler
was. In the tradition of the cruel emperors of China's past, Mao set himself
up to be a god who required unquestioni
...more
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Mag
rated it

 · 
review of another edition Dec 20, 2009
Shelves:
non-fiction, china
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A minutely researched story of how Mao came-to and stayed-in power, with
a lot of behind the scenes information, detailed accounts from diplomatic
meetings and interviews of people who came into contact with him.

Is it well written? It’s good, but not outstanding, and it feels biased. There is
a wealth of interesting information on how his regime functioned, but Mao
as a person doesn’t come fully through. There are some repetitions, some
things are unclear, some information seems willfully omitte
...more

7 likes ·  Like
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Slackyb
rated it
Oct 06, 2017
Recommends it for: lovers of history or page-turners.

This long, detailed biography of Mao contains loads of information. It also

goes at a good clip. Mao is presented as a sadist who used both terrorism of
large groups and elimination of competing individuals to solidify his
position alone at the top. The content is as gruesome as that of any war
history book. Mao's sadistic side is brought out in a number of ways: his
enjoyment of viewings of torture and killing; his treatment of his wives and
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close relatives. Mao is presented less as a strict co
...more

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Apokolypes
rated it
Apr 13, 2013

Jung Chang and her husband are both respected university professors who
attempt to present a biography over 20 years in the making. Every comment
in their book is also extensively sourced with a bibliography at the end that
illuminates they extensive span of their work. The problem is readership be
Log
it by academics or otherwise fails toindifferentiate
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that the book is with a free account.
not her
opinion but rather a collection of other authors facts, many of them from
unclassified documents in Russian KGB archives.Continue
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Tom
rated it
Continue with Amazon
Mar 18, 2013
Wow. I bet Batman would write a less biased hate filled book about his
parents killers then what Changs got here. But both
Signdo
updeserve to be in a
with email
pulpy comic book world due to the sensationalism and over the top delivery
they'd contain. This book doesn't stray too farAlready
away from Mao'sSign
a member? life,
in but it
does often take a break from history and dive off the deep end into hate
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You'll certainly think so after spending time with him in th
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loafingcactus
rated it
Jul 05, 2013
Shelves:
biography, read-2013, regional-china

It is very peculiar that a book could be written of such length and full of
such needling and petty detail while touching its subject so shallowly. The
authors seem to view their job as to ascribe all evil to Mao, but it is not
enough to say he was evil- what drove him?

The book reaches a hilarious level of propaganda language. No opportunity

for universal hyperbole is missed; no closing statement of doom is left
unsaid. Some of them made me laugh out loud, probably not the authors
intention but
...more

5 likes ·  Like
 · see review

Jana
rated it
Jun 28, 2007
Shelves:
history, asian, biography

Jung Chang wrote a beautiful story in Wild Swans, the biograpy of her own
family through the Mao era, but this biography she has written of Mao
Zedong is flawed in that she clearly lets her overwhelming hatred for what
 her family went through keep her from being an objective biographer. Chang
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paints Mao as a monster. He did fail as a leader, but he also did many good
things for China. A historian--the role Chang is attempting to assume here-
MytoBooks
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look at all sides of these issues of power an
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DISCUSS THIS BOOK new topic

topics  posts  views  last activity   

What book is this? Please help! 1 4 Apr 02, 2020 06:43PM  

民主党海内委:
薄熙来刘源拉拢李讷 讽刺习近平不是正统啊 1 10 Nov 09, 2018 04:13PM  

Goodreads Librari...:
Correction, add 3 15 Oct 30, 2018 10:30AM  

Mao Zedong 1 4 Jan 22, 2018 01:55PM  

A Tough Read, but worth it 12 66 Jul 18, 2017 05:03AM  

Max Grow Xtreme 1 3 Jul 18, 2017 05:00AM  

AMAZING STORY 1 5 Jul 24, 2016 10:18AM  

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