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Mao
The Untold Story
by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday


8.5

based on 24 reviews
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based on 43 votes
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Official Publisher Site

This epic biography of the notorious Chinese leader is the result of a decade of research.

Knopf, 832 pages
10/18/2005
$35.00

ISBN: 0679422714

Nonfiction
Biographies & Memoirs
History

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Kenneth Murphy

No book has come as close to unravelling the mystery of Mao's character as this one. [29 Oct 2005]

Atlantic Monthly Benjamin Schwarz

At the very least this book should finally mortify those former campus radical chowderheads who sported the Little Red Book (unread and unreadable) in the pocket of their Army surplus jackets.

Booklist Brad Hooper

This biography of the giant of twentieth-century Chinese history boasts a monumental marshaling of detail and historiographically overturning revelations. It takes time to get through and more time to digest, but there is no time when its value is not apparent. [1 Sep 2005, p. 47]

Kirkus Reviews

A startling document, one that will surely occasion revision of the historical record. [15 Aug 2005, p. 892]

Library Journal Charles W. Hayford

A controversial, highly significant, and compellingly readable biography that should be in every library. [1 Sep 2005, p. 152]

The New York Times Book Review Nicholas D. Kristof

This biography supplies substantial new information and presents it all in a stylish way that will put it on bedside tables around the world.

USA Today Deirdre Donahue

For anyone in search of a serious examination of Mao, his gruesome legacy and China, this astonishing book is a must-read.

Wall Street Journal Jasper Becker

Some people in China seem keen to for the truth to finally emerge or how else, one wonders, could Jung Chang and Jon Halliday have gained the access they did.

Daily Telegraph Max Hastings

Chang and Halliday's work mocks the Western statesmen who deluded themselves that Mao Tse-tung was worthy of respect even as an adversary, and lays bare the absurdity of Mao's admirers, who supposed him to be the standard-bearer for a coherent social vision.

Daily Telegraph Nicholas Shakespeare

While some might find Mao: the Unknown Story a dish served up too cold, quite a few will weep as they read it. I suspect that when China comes to terms with its past this book will have played a role.

Boston Globe Michael Kenney

There is a high sense of righteousness, undeterred by confusion, as well as a sense of mission in ''Mao."

The Spectator John Weston

For the general reader, what gives this book special flavour and interest is Jung Chang’s vivid human touch, as a Chinese who lived on the spot through so much of the later Maoist phenomenon she describes.

TLS: The Times Literary Supplement Perry Link

If the book sells even half as many copies as the 12 million of Wild Swans, it could deliver the coup de grace to an embarrassing and dangerous pattern of Western thinking.

Washington Post John Pomfret

Chang and Halliday's work is destined to become a classic, but it's a flawed classic. Mao is a great read but not worth believing wholesale.

Chicago Tribune Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom

Rather than try to dissuade general readers from buying this problematic page-turner, I would simply urge them not to rely on it as their sole source of information about Mao and to treat its claims as skeptically as they might those in a prosecutor's opening statement at a trial. [6 Nov 2005]

Christian Science Monitor Marjorie Kehe

Compelling as its narrative is, this book has its flaws.

San Francisco Chronicle Howard W. French

Historians will find much to quibble about in this voluminous but jaunty work. Chang and Halliday's word is far from the last, and yet for anyone who reads it there is no way to mistake Mao's smiling countenance for anything like benevolence again.

The Economist

By filtering 20th-century China through the life of a single despot without due attention being paid to the iniquities of his opponents, the book feels too much like the story of a lone ogre, and not enough like a complex and dispassionate history.

London Review Of Books Andrew Nathan

This book can thus be read as a report on the crumbling of the Mao myth, as well as a bombshell aimed at destroying that myth. That the Chinese are getting rid of their Mao myth is welcome. But more needs to take its place than a simple personalisation of blame.

Publishers Weekly

Sweeping but flawed biography. [5 Sep 2005, p. 51]

The Independent Frank McLynn

It is neither serious history nor serious biography.

The New York Times Michiko Kakutani

The authors... provide scant historical context for Mao's ascendance... To make matters worse, they occasionally make gross generalizations that cannot be proved.

Los Angeles Times Seth Faison

But the book's main flaw is excess. The authors seem so set on demolishing Mao's reputation that they overreach. [21 Oct 2005, p. E18]

New York Review Of Books Jonathan D. Spence

By focusing so tightly on Mao's vileness--to the exclusion of other factors--the authors undermine much of the power their story might have had.

The average user rating for this book is 8.5 (out of 10) based on 43 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

chris K gave it an8:
I was fascinated by this book and I couldn't put it down partly because horror fascinates. Also it was exciting to read these alternative versions of Chinese history, I was tempted to believe I was getting in on the 'previously untold Truth' . But the authors seemed to have an agenda beyond just informing me (a biased tone throughout) and so for me the credibility of this book was undermined quite a bit by that. Still it was an amazing read.

Pete y. gave it a1:
full of speculations of the motive of Mao.

Jones L gave it a1:
The so-called untold stories are based on some interviews with +80 years old and memories of the descendants of events. The book portrays Mao as the mastermind of every single incident in China.

zhaohui w gave it a0:
no wonder chang grew up in china but she's pretty bad in writing a propaganda like this book. after leefing through a few pages of it, i can draw a conclusion for you: mao should be considered the 8th wonder in history. he used all evil tricks and still managed to rally foolish people around him and defeated KMT army which was equiped by the american supplies and hundreds times stronger. isn't this miraculous?

Kerry Cn gave it a3:
I believe the authors wrote this book out the hatred. They have distorted lots of the facts. Some of their findings need further investigation. We need the true history, not just a distortion book. I even believe there might be a polical reason behind.

John B gave it an8:
A great book, not without its faults of course, but a hard-hitting account that pulls no punches. Why make excuses for Mao - should Hitler have excuses made for him?

bill h gave it a9:
Astonishing achievement. Perhaps a little overwrought in their hatred of Mao, but it is hard to blame them in view of his atrocities.

Mao The Untold Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday

Mao
The Untold Story
by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday