Mao: A Life Book

Of the three great tyrants of the 20th century, Hitler, Stalin and Mao, the West generally knows least about the latter. What we do know is that he was every bit as genocidal in his policies as either of the other two great villains of our age. In fact, in purely statistical terms, Mao might have been responsible for the deaths of more people than Hitler and Stalin combined. However, Philip Short's immense, but immensely readable and impressively researched, biography of the man goes far deeper than this. Yes, he acknowledges, Mao was a tyrant, but then China has always been run by tyrants. It has never had a tradition of democracy. And Mao was also an idealist: The deaths of millions was, as he saw it, the price his country had to pay for being dragged from a state of medieval servitude, perpetually on the brink of famine, to being a modern, industrialised, self-sufficient nation, in the space of s single lifetime. Short also humanises Mao, showing a man with a profound and sincere interest in Chinese philosophy, poetry and with a surprisingly sharp sense of humour. None of this can exonerate Mao from the charge of inhumanity on an epic scale. But it does make for a much more rounded and complex portrait of the figure who, as the 21st century unfolds, might be shown to have had more influence than either Hitler or Stalin on world history. --Christopher HartRead More