Rating: Summary: 1/3 of this book is cheating Review: I am a Chinese in Singapore. Although I dislike CCP. But I think some of the content of this book is not true, according to Mao in the mind of most Chinese. Actually, it is impossible for Mr. Li to know so much about Mao, because Mao is a person with keeping distance with everyone. Mao didn't belive intelligents, I don't think he can talk about politics with a physician come from abroad. Mao dislike Li. Even Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping cannot guess what Mao is thinking, how can he talk about serious politics with Li.As I know, Li hope to be prompted by Mao as the Minister of health of PRC, but Mao ignore on Li's promption. This book is a reverenge to Mao. In the view of Chinese moral standard, Li is a guy as.... I read this book thoroughly. I am sure, at least 1/3 of the content is false obviously. Anyway, the person outside China cannot tell the false at all. I think Mao is a person that many person hate him or like him. This is normal. But One should respect the reality.
Rating: Summary: A unique view on a man and his country Review: I first had to read this book for a course on Chinese history in college and it was such a compelling view of the man as well as China that I kept the book and recently reread it! Not only is the book of historical interest, but the book is a real page turner. If you are curious about China and/or dictators, this is a must read!
Rating: Summary: An Evening with Mao Zedong Review: This book was enthralling. Dr. Li chronciled the life of Mao, but also brings to light the personalities of Mao's contemporaries. You learn the very moderating influence that Zhou Enlai played in Chinese politics while at the same the tales of Mao's destructive wife Jiang Qing. This book makes you wish someone so close could write a biography on other modern leaders. The scenes describing Mao's death are vivid and legitimate given the writer's position. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in political intrigue.
Rating: Summary: One of the finest biographies ever written. Review: How ironic that the most extravagant emperor in history should be a Marxist. Next to the Mao depicted in this book, Czar Nicholas seems a naïve schoolboy, Nero a mere dandy. As tens of millions of his own people starve to death because of his deluded policies, Mao lounges about in bed for days on end reading history and eating fatty pork. As tens of millions of families are torn apart by the persecutions he promotes in his Cultural Revolution, he blithely carries on sex fests night after night like some superannuated rock star. Dr. Li, doing involuntary service as Mao's personal physician, had a ringside seat for this spectacle from 1955 to 1976. Mao didn't need a round-the-clock doctor. He just wanted Dr. Li perpetually on call in order to gratify his need for control. Li himself wanted to be a real doctor, to help sick people. But had he acted on his desire to resign his post and go to work in a hospital, he might well have found himself and his wife and children thrown into Maoist concentration camps (euphemistically called reform-through-labor camps) like millions of his compatriots. So Dr. Li bit his tongue and submitted to his bondage. He also, unbeknownst to Mao, took copious notes. Li brings Mao up close and in person as he swims with relish in rivers floating with human excrement, as he hatches plans to make fields that had produced two tons of grain for 4000 years produce eight tons simply by digging deeper and adding more seed, as he crows over the success of backyard steel furnaces in melting down doorknobs into amorphous ingots. The account sometimes resembles a description of someone undergoing a series of hallucinations, and the hallucinations becoming public policy. Mao, who is often given credit for industrializing China, did not have the sense to provide his workers with something so basic as a wheelbarrow. In the sole recorded instance of this champion of the laborer doing any labor, Li shows him joining workers who are equipped with baskets and shoulder poles for the building of a dam. Predictably, Mao gives his shovel to someone else after a few minutes, and retires to a tent to drink tea. His thoughts on public health are equally advanced. Upon being told by his doctor that, as a carrier of a sexually transmitted disease, he is infecting hundreds of women and that it would be helpful if he would wash himself from time to time and perhaps go so far as to take some medicine, the great man replies that, since he has no symptoms, he sees no need to take any medicine. As for washing himself, Mao explains, "I wash myself inside the bodies of my women." Thus, it makes no difference whether you're a health professional or a connoisseur of depravity, a peasant or a president. There's something for everyone in The Private Life Of Chairman Mao.
Rating: Summary: Fascinating Account of a 20th Century Dictator Review: This wonderful book gives the reader an inside look into the private life of Mao. It is almost like being a fly on the wall so to speak. Some of the accounts are humerous such as the scene with Mao's bodyguards trying to talk the chairman out of trying to swim the Yangtze River. The reader also learns that Mao did not believe in Chinese medicine much less Western medicine. The book is very detailed but hard to put down as Dr. Li chronicles the political struggles within Mao's inner circle. This is the definitive book on the private life of a dictator.
Rating: Summary: Very Good. I read this book twice. Review: This book is the best one with first hand information about Mao.
Rating: Summary: Mao's Famine - the worst in history Review: Two recent books on the world's worst famine under Mao - about 30 million deaths - are Jasper Becker, Hungry Ghosts (Holt); and Dali Yang, Calamity and Reform in China (Stanford). Both are well worth reading. Becker is more viseral and one-sided while Yang also argues that the famine was fundamental to China's post-Mao reforms.
Rating: Summary: Modern Chiness history a prerequisite before you read Review: As a American Chinese, I am convinced that this book does tell the truth. I am not at all surprised by the corrupted life style of Mao. Because he was behaving in normal way of an emperor which he felt he was. As to the "undemocratic" political environment which he created, I am not surprised also. Because after all, Mao had only read ancient Chinese book and possessed only knowledge of ancient Chinese culture and history which for thousand of years have never experienced democracy. He did not know anything else except imperial rule. One cannot grasp fully the achievement of Mao and really understand this book without first understanding the history of China and how far Mao brought China in the last (short) 80 years. Americans think of Lee Iacocca as a great leader turning around Chrysler. Now consider Mao turning around a country which has thousand years of baggage, 1 billion people to feed, a government which was corrupted to its core and at the highest level, overran by foreign powers and torned by civil wars. With this historical background, one cannot but admire Mao's vision, his determination, his strategies and his ability to inspire people. All the personal details described in the book suddenly become insignificant. Mao did make mistakes like the cultural revolution which cost millions of life for which I do not think that was what he intended. Overall I believe the Chinese people prefer China of today than what China would have been without him. As a contemporary leader in Asia, he is much better than Cheng Kai Chaik of the Nationalist China, Suharto of Indonesia or Marcos of Philippines because all those three so called "leaders" robbed their countries clean for their own interests and left their people living in hell for generations. Since all three leaders were strongly supported by U.S. while Mao was the U. S. enemy, that may explain why Asian feel American do not understand Asia. This ignorance of Asian culture and history led American into the Korean War and Vietnam War. As an American Chinese with the first hand experience of the democratic system in the U.S. and knowledge of the Asian cultural background, I am not optimistic at all about the road to democratic reform in China which will take a long time, in terms of generations instead of years.
Rating: Summary: A tremendous look at China's first Communist Emperor Review: Dr. Li's book is an absolute read for any serious student of Mao and the People's Republic. The amazing thing about this book is that it shows that nothing really changed in China with the advent of the People's Republic. Mao simply took on the mantal of Emperor as others had done for 3,000 years before him. His rule was absolute and ruthless. Only under Deng's reforms in the 1980's and the continuing reforms under Jiang is China coming out from under Emperor Mao's thumb. We should be grateful that Dr. Li lived long enough to write this wonderful work.
Rating: Summary: Impressive, informative, magnificent. Review: The book was published one year before Dr. Zhisui's death. We must be grateful for the important document that tells us once again that communism doesn't work in combination with human nature. Mao's preaches about marxism, socialism and communism, were denied in his own life. I don't think Mao had a bad character though. He was very sensitive, but he so utterly could not handle the power of being in charge of so many hundreds of millions of people. Our focus is always on Mao, but Dr. Li confronts us with the fact that the real creepy devils could be found throughout the organisation. Certainly Mao has made unforgivable mistakes, but he did what he believed was the best thing for his country. I mean, what about his wife... my oh my...
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