Mao: The Unknown Story Audiobook (Free)

“Since the spectacular success of Chang’s Crazy Swans we have waited impatiently on her behalf to filled with her hubby this monumental study of China’s most notorious modern innovator. The expectation continues to be that she’d rewrite modern Chinese history. The wait around has been worth it and the expectation justified. That is a bombshell of a book.”

-Chris Patten, the final governor of Hong Kong, in The Times (London)

Based on a decade of research and on interviews with a lot of Mao’s close circle on the subject of Mao: The Unfamiliar Story in China who have never spoken before-and with virtually everyone outside China who got significant dealings with him-this is the most authoritative life of Mao ever written. It is filled with startling revelations, exploding the myth of the Long March, and displaying a completely unfamiliar Mao: he was not driven by idealism or ideology; his seductive and intricate romantic relationship with Stalin went back towards the 1920s, ultimately bringing him to power; he welcomed Japanese profession of a lot of China; and he schemed, poisoned and blackmailed to get his method. After Mao conquered China in 1949, his magic formula goal was to dominate the world. In chasing this fantasy he caused the deaths of 38 million people in the greatest famine ever sold. In all, well over 70 million Chinese language perished under Mao’s rule-in peacetime.

Combining meticulous research using the story-telling design of Crazy Swans, this biography offers a harrowing portrait of Mao’s ruthless accumulation of force through the exercise of terror: his first victims had been the peasants, then the intellectuals and, finally, the inner circle of his own advisors. The audience enters the shadowy chambers of Mao’s court and eavesdrops around the play in its hidden recesses. Mao’s personality as well as the enormity of his behavior toward his wives, mistresses and children are revealed for the very first time.

This is an entirely fresh look at Mao in both content and approach. It’ll astonish historians and the general reader alike.