Rating: 
Summary: quality reading
Review: As an American-born Chinese who read the book while studying in China for a year, it explained a lot of the cultural things I saw. My parents are from Hong Kong, their parents having left China before Mao came to power, and for that, I am thankful. This book does explain a lot of present-day mainland China culture, which is different from Hong Kong Chinese culture or overseas Chinese culture. The stories and ideas presented in this novel make a lot of sense as backdrop for the nature of the political leadership in China today, as well as their interaction with other nations, especially the West.
Rating: 
Summary: The Best biography ever written about a dictator
Review: Dr Li, Mao's personal physician, wrote a fairly enticing and biased biography about one of 20th Century's most fascinating politician or mass murderer. The last of Mao's 20 odd years are mapped out brilliantly in this book, coupled with the doctor's own observations and opinions.
How this book came into print, was short of being a miracle. Never before has someone come so close to keeping a diary and writing every single minute detail of an egomaniac. Even the specifics of his physical and medical condition is being described vividly. (I didn't know Mao had a genital defect, and was impotent, all at once!)
The most tragic part of the book comes in between the chapters describing the disastrous Great Leap Forward, its subsequent famines and it climaxes with the purging of Mao's numerous deputies in the midst of the chaotic Cultural Revolution.
When I first saw this book in the library, I was a little apprehensive initially. But what lured me to it, was the sexual pretense that Mao enjoyed orgies with bevy of beauties. So I picked up the book. Little did I know, I would spend 3 weeks consuming it and I was so mesmerized, I couldn't put it down! Of course, 3 weeks wasn't enough for me to finish the thick tome. So I bought the paperback edition and it was worth every single penny.
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Summary: Mao: first Marxist Sex-Emperor of China. Get the Truth
Review: Dr. Li's book is the best possible first-hand account there is on the late evil dictator Mao Zedong (1893-1976). The Chinese look upon the years of 1949-1976 as the "death, famine and disaster years". Millions starved, millions tortured, Red Guards rampaging and killing innocents, and elevation of a illiterate Mao into a demi-god. The 20th century can now be seen as the century of three evil dictators: Mao, Hitler and Stalin. Buy the book, read it and judge the facts for yourself. Whereas the USSR of Stalin and the Nazi Germany of Hitler is ceases to exist, the evil dictatorship of the communist of China that Mao put into power rules China. Germany and Russia now have elected presidents. China enters the 21st century with a despotic, evil, secretive and paranoid government put in place after a bloody civil war in 1949 by Mao. Dr. Li was Mao's personal doctor from 1954-1976. Mao, died at age 83 and last two decades of his life, had constant health problems. Hence, Dr. Li was in constant companion and had numerous opportunities to talk to and view the daily life the Mao. In fact, there is absolutely no better person to write a detailed biography of Mao's life than his personal doctor. Written while in Chicago for his wife medical treatment, this book has been malign by the communist dictators of China. Leaders like Lincoln, FDR, Churchill are elected and must rule under a system of laws. Mao was a guerilla-fighter, illiterate, and beholden to no laws, constitution, checks and balances, and legal constraints. Mao was the first dictator-emperor of post-1949 China and a Marxist dictator at that. Only a personal account by Mao's doctor could the sordid truth come forth. Dr. Li's book is all the more of historical importance. Some facts from Dr. Li's book. 1.Mao was addicted to sex with peasant's girls, the first Marxist-Leninist sex-emperor. Hundreds of women were served to him like food. While preaching the virtue of a simple peasant life, he created elaborate dancing parties and slept with scores of women in any given night. Contracted with venereal disease, he refused to be treated and infected all the peasant girls with diseases. With a voracious sex appetite, he even had the male security guards massage his private parts. Peasant girls, honored by the opportunity to sleep with Mao even introduced their sisters. The sex-emperor was not only preaching the virtues of peasants, he was fornicating with all their girls. 2.Mao refused to brush his teeth, bath or wash. Rinsing his teeth with only green tea, all his front upper teeth fell off and a green slime coated his teeth. He had peasant girls give him a sponge bath. For weeks, he would sleep in bed refusing to dress or put on shoes. He kept no regular schedule or work habits. A true illiterate peasant to the end. 3.Mao's court had a continuous air of danger, intrigue, gossip and backstabbing. His wife or second or third in command fell in out of favor. No one, even Dr. Li. Could feel a sense of personal safety. It was an atmosphere of intrigue where one could be eaten by the intrigues and back-stabbing. 4.Mao was fundamentally illiterate and uneducated. Mao had no formal education or modern ideas of economics, medicine, science or nation-building. His idea in the 1950's of producing steel was have everyone melt the pots, pans, and door and doorknobs to produce steel. His idea of living long was the slept with hundreds of peasants girls and "sap their energies". 5.Mao every political campaign, from the 1950's onto the 1960's Cultural Revolution was for one simple reason: he wanted to retain total power. Mao used ideology as a tool to purge dissent and those who did not agree with him or openly criticize him. Seeing the millions of death from famine in the 1950's from his harebrained economic policies, he concocted a campaign even more harebrained than the first one: the Cultural Revolution. Seeing his failed policies has led to famine and colleagues sensed he was an illiterate oaf, he summoned the teenagers of China to be his Red Guards. Red Guards were brainwashed to utter his saying and rampage and sack the schools, hospitals and government agencies. Millions were tortured, killed, purge and maim because of the sole reason he wanted to retain absolute power. The fine saying that "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely" aptly applies to Mao. Dr. Li book provides full details. Dr. Li book provides a first-hand account Mao. To really understand his place and history, one has to understand Mao himself. Dr. Li does not sugarcoat the facts. The facts are basically that Mao was an illiterate, uneducated, egomaniac bent on retaining full power until his dying days. The disasters of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution can be understood only if one understands Mao personally. Mao himself had no knowledge of science, economics or law. All his ideas were harebrained simply because he did not have any formal education. The concept of building a modern nation-state is simply beyond his comprehension. However, elaborate sex-emperor parties, back-stabbing, the herding of the people, Mao is an expert at. Dr. Li books has the full facts. Academics, Intellectual and out of touch "pinheads" fantasize and romanticize about dictators. Dr. Li books sets the facts straight, writes as he sees and hears the facts. He himself was filled with optimism about Mao and China, but reality sets in. After millions starved to death, millions maimed and killed, Dr. Li had no remorse when the dictator died in 1976. Millions continue to romanticize about this evil dictator. Please read Dr. Li book. Get the facts and truth on Mao. Hitler, Stalin and Mao, the three evil dictators of the 20th. Century that brought untold suffering and death. Dr. Li's book is of great historical value in documenting one of the three dictators. Please buy it, read it, and judge the facts for yourself. Seek the truth on Mao and you will know how he brought death, famine, and suffering to millions. Dr. Li's book is a good starting point on the facts on Mao. Buy the book.
Rating:
Summary: A Personal Look...
Review: i picked this book up while i was in Hong Kong on a holiday. when i bought it, a friend of mine who lives in HK told me not to take it over the border into mainland china, that the book 'is illegal there'.
i always had a fascination of trying to understand modern china, it's meeting of 'old and new'...and in my search for this, i learned that in order to understand 'modern china' you have to understand a man named Mao Zedong.
this book took a lot of courage for Dr. Li to write...for those of you who haven't read it. it's bascially a compilation of a personal journal written by Dr. Li, who was Mao's personal physician from the beginning of the People's Republic of China until his death. as if it wasn't dangerous enough for him to keep a personal diary that critisized communist party leaders, which could get you arrested or shot....he actually wrote a book about his experiences.
Dr. Li gave me a perspective of Mao that no one else could know except for the inner circle of Mao's closet friends. the book is long, but very easy to read because it is all in the first person...
"i saw mao do this...."
"this person said this to me...."
when i finished reading the book, i felt like i really knew what Mao's personality was really like. not only did i learn of Mao's personality, but also of the top party elite. Important people such as Deng Xiaopeng, Dong Wangxing, and Zhou Enlai...who also had a BIG hand in the shaping of how china is run today.
Dr. Li gives firsthand accounts of what was really happening in the core of the chinese communist party during events such as May Day, and the infamous "Lin Baio Incident" or better known as the "gang of four rebellion".
the book is also very enlightening on the outside influences that had a hand in inside political struggles around mao's aides such as Mao's wife as well as personal observations on Mao's many mistresses.
this book is excellent for anyone with an interest in learning how modern chinese communist party politics were played out in the crucial moments of Mao Zedong's rule.
i highly recommend this book
J.
Rating: 
Summary: fiction work masquerading as history
Review: Immediately following the publication of _The Private Life of Chairman Mao_ in 1994 (English and Chinese versions were published similtaneously), Chinese historians and prominent individuals began to speak out about the book's factual mistakes. Several people who had known both Dr. Li Zhisui and Mao Zedong pointed out that Dr. Li was not in fact Mao's "personal physician" but merely an ordinary doctor who treated Mao only a few times in his life. Soon the revelations of serious problems with the book had circulated widely enough in the Chinese language media in both mainland China and abroad that few scholars of modern Chinese history who paid attention to Chinese media considered the work worth even discussing anymore. Unfortunately, this criticism failed to make headlines in the English language media, and with most of the readership ignorant enough of Chinese history and culture to notice the glaring problems with the book, along with its endorsement by the prominent right-wing sinologist Andrew Nathan, _Private Life_ became enshrined as a work of serious scholarship revealing "the ugly truth" about Mao Zedong. To try to balance this situation, a few members of the New York based China Study Group (www.chinastudygroup.org) translated some of the critical reviews into English and published them as _Manufacturing History: Sex, Lies, and Random House's Memoirs of Mao's Physician_ (1996, China Study Group Press). This book was distributed among the academic community connected to the group, but larger-scale publication and marketing fell by the way side as the group moved on to new projects. Almost ten years later, I look at the customer reviews on this page and see that there is a continued need to speak out against _Private Life_. More important than the countless individual fabrications and exaggerations the book contains, such efforts on the part of right-wing academia (both Chinese and international) to demonize Mao Zedong play a role in the larger project to silence dissent to the ongoing global consolidation of neoliberal capitalism. In contemporary China, the memory of Mao Zedong and his "path" has become the site of an intense ideological struggle as the right-wing of the party has created a foundation for unprecedented power as a bureaucratic-capitalist class, and as the peasants and workers have seen their conditions deteriorate, their lives destabilized, and their being disvalued. It has thus become a subversive act for peasants to display images of Mao in their homes, as anyone who has visited the Chinese countryside can attest. But I also think that Mao's representation has important implications for politics outside of China. In the U.S., for instance, "the atrocities of Stalin and Mao" (there are plenty of problems with putting Stalin and Mao in the same category, incidentally) are often referred to offhandedly (as if no elaboration were necessary) to silence any political discussion that even hints at the redistribution of wealth or the protection of communities from corporate exploitation. I'm sorry to extend this "review" so far afield, but I just want to emphasize that 1) this book has little or no academic value, 2) not only is it mendacious; its mendacity has important political implications for both China and the world.
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Summary: Tear Down Mao's portrait off Tienanmen Square already!
Review: Mao is a disgusting, perverted and ignorant mass murderer. Ironically, millions of Chinese school children are being taught how wonderful this absolute horror of a human being was. Hopefully when all the old school hard-liner Chinese politicians die, this book will one day be published in China.
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Summary: My AP Government Book Review
Review: Mao Tse Tung was worshiped by millions. He was a Marxist and proclaimed the rise of the proletariat. However, according to Dr. Li Zhisui, his personal physician, his life was full of corruption, hypocrisy, and decadence. In 1954, Dr. Li Zhisui entered into Maoist China with his wife, Lillian, after practicing medicine for a brief stint in Australia. He entered into China brimming with great hope for and faith in the new Communist government. Because of his unique Western medical experience, Dr. Li is forced to become Mao's personal twentyfour hour physician. Because of his family's bourgeois background, he is forced to take this position against his will in order for his family to be avoid being sent to government concentration work camps. Dr. Li continually requests to be relieved of his duties, but is constantly brought forth closer and closer within Mao's inner circle. From 1954 to 1976, Dr. Li becomes Mao's confidant and physician. However, Mao had no idea that Dr. Li was also writing his detailed memoirs during this turbulent part of China's history. Dr. Li's writing style is very simple, personal, and ingenuous. He brings to life the historical figure, Chairman Mao. The reader soon learns that Mao lived a lavish lifestyle along with corrupt morals. His insightful first-hand accounts need no aid to discredit his former boss. They are just too real to ignore. During the Cultural Revolution and The Great Leap Forward, when millions of his people are being purged or starving, he describes Mao's frightening lack of concern for his people. He had an entourage of young female companions with whom he would have sex often. Sometimes, he had two or three women a night. He would also hold lavish dancing parties along with folk dancers, Chinese operas, and plays. Lavish dinner parties were also a huge favorite. He would hold these often for his "inner sanctum." They would eat fatty oily pork (oil was extremely rare in China at the time) and also other rare exquisite Chinese delicatessen like seafood. This is hardly a lifestyle of a man who is concerned for his people and one who preaches daily the advantages of living like a peasant. Dr. Li also details how inept and unintelligent Chairman Mao really was. Li blames Mao solely for the mass starvation and deaths in China. For instance, during the "Great Leap Forward", Li describes how Mao was envious of Western steel production. Therefore, he urges his comrades all over China to abandon their work and construct backyard steel furnaces. He urges them to frenzily melt down all their amorphous steel products around like ingots, tools, and doorknobs. However, when harvest time came around, there were no men in the field because they were all working in Mao's backyard steel furnaces. The rice harvested was down in famine levels. Starvation soon set in and the death toll exponentially rose. Dr. Li's book is by the best biography of Mao I have ever read. Doing research online about this book, I learned of the huge controversy surrounding this book. Many claim that Dr. Li's account is false, revisionist, or deconstructionist. However, maybe his critics are true, but I still find Dr. Li's message tragic, yet classic. His message is that one must compromise his conscience in order to partake in Communism. He concludes: "I devoted my professional life to Mao and China, but now I am stateless and homeless, unwelcome in my own country. I write this book in great sorrow for Lillian and for everyone who cherishes freedom. I want it serve as a reminder of the terrible human consequences of Mao's dictatorship and of how good and talented people under his regime were forced to violate their consciences and sacrifice their ideals in order to survive."
Rating:
Summary: An excellent translation
Review: The English translation is excellent. Dialogue is natural and conveys its meaning accurately, and descriptions have a solid literary value of their own.
As someone with only a rudimentary knowledge of Chinese history, I will not delve into the controversies surrounding this book too much. But I see no attempt on Dr. Li's part in "demonizing" Mao, as some reviews on this site have claimed. I think both pro-Mao and anti-Mao camps have used this demonization to promote their views. Mao hoarded his power and had little regard for the lives of the lao bai xing, the masses, but he was not an evil Hitler who set out to destroy them. As Dr. Li painstakingly lays out in his narrative, Mao's personality, motivations, and the politics within and outside of Group One are too complex for anyone to say, "Mao was a demon," or "Mao was a great man."
That said, no matter how pro-Mao you get, there is no ignoring the tens of millions of people that died during the "Three years of Natural Disaster," not to mention the countless, countless lives wronged and destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. Those are facts that leave little room for interpretation, unless you deny that they ever happened, like some people do the Holocaust.
The point is, no memoir should be read as a fact-by-fact historical document. Every memoir suffers from the undependability of memory (hence the term "memoir"). But that does not mean there is no truth to be found, and the truth is often too complex to be wrung into one tidy interpretation. Anyone who does that is obviously more concerned with their own agenda than with the quest for truth.
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Summary: Engrossing, fascinating study on the life of a dictator.
Review: This book is a tremendously fascinating look at the life of one of the 20th century's most powerful dictators. There is no more comprehensive look into the mind of Mao than in this book by his own personal physician. I'm not sure if I approve of having a doctor spill the personal, often medical secrets of his patient, but the book is very engaging, never-the-less. Even at so many hundred-odd pages, the book just flies by. Engrossing. I got a feel of what might have been going through Mao's head as he launched one disasterous campaign after another. Of what little regard he had for human life, and how many of his own comrades he was willing to sacrifice to retain power, for the sake of having power. Thoroughly revolting. Dr. Li provides the reader with a portrait of the leader that only someone as close to him could have. I highly recommend this book.
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Summary: Ouy Vey (As Carl Marx would Say)
Review: This book misses out on the real Mao Se Tung. The man with the big smile, the man who loved little doggies, the man with a song in his heart, and the fact that he was a great dancer. I'll still give the book two stars because it is about my dear friend but otherwise I am very disappointed.
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