Jonathan Spence's biography of Mao is concise yet revealing and detailed at the same time. Spence uses social, political, intellectual, and cultural history to provide good background information to Mao's life and also to explain the impacts of his policies. Spence is a fine historian. He admits when we simply lack enough documented evidence to support a claim or not. When we don't know enough about why Mao made a certain decision or not, Spence mentions this lack of evidence, fair and square. At times he does make the leap of guesswork, but at least he uses the phrases "probably," "could have," and "may have" with honesty. Despite being concise and accessible to a general audience, Spence does show himself to be a good scholar and talks a little about the documents he uses to deduce some of his conclusions about Mao. His main contention appears to be that as Mao took on more responsibilities and tasks of state, party, and military leadership and management, he became increasingly isolated from diverse outside contacts and that this caused him to become ever more confident in his ideological convictions. Spence is in the more recent camp of scholars who try to view Mao more "objectively" and distantly, but he still uses the rhetoric of the liberal camp of critics of Mao and shows that he comes from that ideological background. All-in-all, this book is a fine introduction to Mao's life in short, easy-to-read prose. Spence also happens to be a great writer in general and is fun to read.
While the book provided an adequate overview of Mao's life, I was ultimately a little disappointed. As someone who knew some but not a lot of the historical backdrop against which Mao lived, I found the book somewhat unsatisfying. The early chapters were the most insightful and included a useful look into Mao's upbringing and early associations with the communist movement in China. Once Mao rose to dominance in the Communist Party, the book seemed to falter a bit and gave only a rough sketch of the final decades of Mao's life--undoubtedly the most important time period in terms of Mao's effect on history. I couldn't tell whether Spence figured that Mao's time as "Chairman Mao" was so well trodden he need not dwell on it, or whether he was given a page limit by his publishers and figured he should just wrap things up. Before reading the book, I was hoping to get a better understanding of the Cultural Revolution. But Spence appears to be purposefully vague about Mao's role in the Cultural Revolution. It is admittedly a complicated topic, but Spence failed to provide much illumination.
What do You think about Mao Zedong: A Life (2006)?
Very good and concise biography of Mao Zedong though you need to have read other Chinese Communist history to understand this book better from Mao's perspective. Major policies set by Mao and the failings of them like 'the great leap forward' & 'the cultural revolution' were significant events mentioned in this book without detailed elaboration to truly grasp their fallibility. Nonetheless, Jonathan Spence is a renowned Chinese historian and this book is deliberately kept brief for a non-specialist reader.
—Joseph
A brief and not at all sensational account of Chairman Mao. Meaning, it does not address any of the sensational aspects of Mao's personality (such as Mao's physician did) or dwell on the disasters of the Cultural Revolution of of the Great Leap Forward or get into the whys and wherefores of Mao's (manipulative) relationship with Lin Biao, Liu Shao Qi or Zhou Enlai. Instead, it is a "straight up" account of Mao's life and succeeds I think in communicating the essentials of these without getting into any detail about those other, polemical issues. I think it well worth reading in addition to -- any part of a very broad spectrum of books.
—Hock Tjoa
The first half of this book contained few details I found interesting or useful. Second half was much better, but it leaves out a discussion of even some of the most basic questions one would have in reading about his life, like how it was possible for such a cult of personality to develop around him. The way Spence tells this part of the story, one day Mao is critical of the cult of personality around Stalin; the next, Chinese Communism is identified entirely with Mao's thought. And there are a number of kind of weird "gotcha" moments where Spence finds some contradiction in Mao's personal life and political theory and presents it as proof that... I dunno, that Mao was a hypocrite, I guess. Which, okay, fine, but the examples are often fairly minor. Still, overall this was worthwhile.
—Micah
