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Was Mao Really a Monster?: The Academic Response to Chang and Halliday’s

1st Edition

Was Mao Really a Monster? The Academic Response to Chang and Halliday’s "Mao: The Unknown Story"

Edited By Gregor Benton, Lin Chun Copyright 2010
208 Pages
by Routledge

208 Pages
by Routledge

208 Pages
by Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday was published in 2005 to a great fanfare. The book portrays Mao as a monster – equal to or worse than Hitler and Stalin – and a fool who won power by native cunning and ruled by terror. It received a rapturous welcome from reviewers in the popular press and rocketed to the top of the worldwide bestseller list. Few works on China by writers... Read more

Introduction - Gregor Benton and Lin Chun Part I. Reviews in non-specialist academic publications 1: Dark Tales of Mao the Merciless - Delia Davin 2: Jade and Plastic - Andrew J. Nathan 3: Portrait of a Monster – Jonathan Spence Part II. Reviews in the China Journal 4: The Portrayal of Opportunism, Betrayal, and Manipulation in Mao’s Rise to Power - Gregor Benton and Steve Tsang 5: The New Number One Counter-Revolutionary inside the Party: Academic Biography as Mass Criticism - Timothy Cheek 6: Pitfalls of Charisma - Lowell Dittmer 7: "I’m So Ronree" - Geremie R. Barmé Part III. Reviews in other specialist academic journals 8: Mao and The Da Vinci Code: Conspiracy, Narrative and History - David S. G. Goodman 9: Mao: A Super Monster? - Alfred Chan Part IV. Chinese reviews 10: Mao: The Unknown Story, A Review - Yung-fa Chen 11: Mao: The Unknown Story: An Intellectual Scandal - Gao Mobo 12: A Critique of Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story - Jin Xiaoding Part V. Other reviews 13: Mao Lives - Arthur Waldron 14: From Wild Swans to Mao: The Unknown Story - Bill Willmott

Biography

Gregor Benton is Professor of Chinese History at Cardiff University. His book Mountain Fires: The Red Army’s Three-Year War in South China, 1934-1938 won several awards, including the Association of Asian Studies’ best book on modern China. Recent work includes Chinese Migrants and Internationalism: Forgotten Histories, 1917-1945; Mao Zedong and the Chinese Revolution (also published by Routledge)

Lin Chun is Senior Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics, UK. She is the author of a number of books, of which the most recent is The Transformation of Chinese Socialism.

Benton and Lin have done the field of China studies a marvellous service by compiling this book. [...] Even those who, like myself, have never read the biography that serves as its intellectual point of departure, will find much food for thought in its pages. - MICHAEL SCHOENHALS

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