In the original dustsheet. Black board binding with gilt title on the spine.

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First Edition

This authoritative account of Mao’s life is based on years of research and on interviews with many of his close friends who had not talked before this book. Motivated by a thirst for personal power over political vision, Mao comes across in these pages as another Hitler or Stalin. According to the New York Times, the Chinese government banned the book along with any magazine carrying a review of it

Mao: The Unknown Story is a 2005 biography of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong (1893–1976) written by the husband-and-wife team of writers Jung Chang and historian Jon Halliday, who depict Mao as being responsible for more deaths in peacetime than Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. It is a work of historical revisionism contrasted with both Chinese official historiography and mainstream Western historiography.

In conducting their research for the book over the course of a decade, the authors interviewed hundreds of people who were close to Mao at some point in his life, used recently published memoirs from Chinese political figures, and explored newly opened archives in China and Russia. Chang herself lived through the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, which she described in her earlier book Wild Swans (1991).

The book quickly became a best-seller in Europe and North America.  It received overwhelming praise from reviews in national newspapers, and also drew praise from some academics  but mostly critical or mixed by others.  Reviews from many China specialists were critical, citing inaccuracies and selectivity in the use of sources and the polemical portrayal of Mao.