Chang, Jung & Halliday, Jon. Mao; the unknown story.

CHANG, Jung & HALLIDAY, Jon. Mao; the unknown story. Random House, Anchor. 801p. bibliog. index. c2005. 0-679-74632-3. $18.00. A

Jung Chang, acclaimed author of Wild Swans, and her husband, historian ion Halliday, spent a decade conducting interviews and archival research to deconstruct the myth of Chairman Mao, a myth that is on the whole still perpetuated by China's current Communist regime. Chang and Halliday's method: to consult every available archive, to listen to every cable they could find between Peking and the Kremlin before and during the 27 years Mao ruled, and to interview every living soul somehow connected to Mao in and out of mainland China, including the exiled Dalai Lama, Henry Kissinger, Mao's daughter Li Na, George H.W. Bush, and such esoteric sources as Shi Da-zheng, son of the film director who was the first famous cultural figure to commit suicide after the Communist takeover. Their list goes on and on, and makes this biography the magisterial work that it is.

The authors' most pressing contention, painstakingly substantiated, is that Mao, during his nefarious reign, starved and overworked 70 million of his people to death. Over half perished during the Great Famine of 1958-1961, a period Mao deemed the Great Leap Forward. These people died during peacetime because Peking mandated exporting vast amounts of food to countries capable of providing Mao's military with nuclear weapons. It was this Superpower Program more than anything else that fueled his ambitions, that made him instill terror and hate campaigns that created a nation of hundreds of millions of petrified, brainwashed, starving people. Meanwhile, the Chairman himself lived a life of extreme comfort and extravagance in grandiose villas built specifically for him all across China.

The authors tread harshly on the mythology of Mac), revealing a man with little if any ideological passion. Instead, he had a love for bloodthirsty thuggery. Mao's China was "run by terror and guarded like a prison." Chang and Halliday's book is both the fascinating revelation of Mao's improbable rise to power and the fierce, long-awaited condemnation of his deadly practices once he got there. At times they seem a little too quick to denounce every single one of his actions and sometimes present him as so much of a solipsistic psychopath that we wonder how he was possibly able to conquer the biggest country in the world. Nevertheless, their research indelibly destroys any claim to Mao's legitimacy. The narrative gives minute-by-minute details of famous events and is truly chilling in what it uncovers.

A--Recommended for advanced students and adults. This code will help librarians and teachers working in high schools where there are honors and advanced placement students. This also help extend KLIATT's usefulness in public libraries.

Avi Kramer, Teaching Intern, Fessenden Sch., W. Newton, MA