"From humble origins in the provinces, Mao Zedong rose to absolute power, unifying with an iron fist a vast country torn apart by years of weak leadership, colonialism, and war."--BOOK JACKET.
"Both a canny tactician and a hardworking organizer, Mao parlayed the privations of the famous Long March and the success of his guerrilla army into a powerful cult of personality and a dominant position in the burgeoning Chinese Communist Party. The Communist victory in 1949 not only elevated him to supreme leader but made his eccentric version of Marxism official dogma; his regime was a volatile mixture of power and mystique that exploded in the havoc of the Cultural Revolution.
Jonathan Spence captures Mao in all his paradoxical grandeur and sheds light on the radical transformation he unleashed that still reverberates in China today."--BOOK JACKET.
Jonathan Dermot Spence is an English-born American historian, sinologist, and writer specialising in Chinese history. He was Sterling Professor of History at Yale University from 1993 to 2008. His most widely read book is The Search for Modern China, a survey of the last several hundred years of Chinese history based on his popular course at Yale. A prolific author, reviewer, and essayist, he has published more than a dozen books on China. He retired from Yale in 2008.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Spence
