bookshelf

MAO ZEDONG

Name: MAO ZEDONG
Author: Jonathan D. Spence
ISBN: 0-670-88669-6

by Jonathan D. Spence ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1999

bookshelf

In this slim volume, historian of China Spence (Yale; The Chan’s Great Continent: China in Western Minds, 1998, etc.) offers a biography of one of the 20th century’s most enigmatic personages. Mao Zedong was born in 1893, as the last imperial dynasty of China was approaching its demise, and died in 1976, as a powerful communist China was entering dÇtente with the US. Between these dates lies a complex and convoluted history that Mao both shaped and was shaped by. Born in relative comfort in rural China, Mao was a diffident student but a voracious reader. He became involved in the many struggles and movements to unite China and free it from Western domination. He came to communism only incrementally and seems to have been more of a liberal as a young man, for instance, as an early defender of women’s rights. Nor was his rise in the Communist Party preordained: he was too nonconformist, his views too unorthodox, especially on the need for rural revolution. Yet by at least the 1940s, Mao was the undisputed leader of the party and thus of China. Mao’s leadership was, as Spence notes, “a long-drawn-out adventure in upheaval.” Increasingly cut off from day-to-day reality, with few if any checks on his power, during the 1950s and “60s, Mao launched China onto one disastrous project after another. Spence does an admirable job of placing Mao in history, but it’s the private man with whom he is most concerned. Aided by many newly available sources, especially correspondence Mao wrote throughout his lifetime, Spence creates a Mao both wise and foolish, cruel and romantic, pragmatic and naive. Yet Mao’s deepest motivations remain elusive, the origins of his megalomania a mystery. Perhaps Mao had created a self that even he could not control or even truly understand. While much is left out here, this is a fine introduction to the mystery of Mao.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-670-88669-6

Page Count: 160

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1999

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY

- BOOK REVIEW
THE KITCHEN SHRINK
by Dora Calott Wang Jonathan D. Spence

- BOOK REVIEW
RETURN TO DRAGON MOUNTAIN
by Jonathan D. Spence

- BOOK REVIEW
TREASON BY THE BOOK
by Jonathan D. Spence

- IN THE NEWS
China Scholar Jonathan D. Spence Is Dead at 85

bookshelf

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

bookshelf

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

bookshelf

BLACK BOY

A RECORD OF CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

by Richard Wright ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 28, 1945

bookshelf

This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.

It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.

Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.