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“A magisterial work…This
magnificent biography methodically demolishes every pillar of Mao’s claim to
sympathy or legitimacy…A triumph.”
— New York Times Book Review
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“An atom bomb of a
book.”
— Time
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“Chilling…Impressive…An
extremely compelling portrait of Mao that will still shock many.”
— Christian Science Monitor
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“An important book in
ways not envisaged…A work of unanswerable authority.”
— Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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“The most complete
and assiduously researched biography of its subject yet published…No earlier
work comes close to matching the density of detail here…The authors have
performed brilliant historical detective work.”
— Atlantic Monthly
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“Chang and Halliday
cast new and revealing light on nearly every episode in Mao’s tumultuous life…A
stupendous work and one hopes that it will be brought before the Chinese
people, who still claim to venerate the man and who have yet to come to terms
with their own history.”
— Guardian (London)
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“Jung Chang and Jon
Halliday have not, in the whole of their narrative, a good word to say about
Mao. In a normal biography, such an unequivocal denunciation would be both
suspect and tedious. But the clear scholarship, and careful notes, of The
Unknown Story provoke another reaction. Mao Tse-Tung’s evil, undoubted and
well-documented, is unequalled throughout modern history.”
— Observer (London)
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“Ever since the
spectacular success of Chang’s Wild Swans we have waited impatiently for
her to complete with her husband this monumental study of China’s most
notorious modern leader. The expectation has been that she would rewrite modern
Chinese history. The wait has been worthwhile and the expectation justified.
This is a bombshell of a book.”
— Times (London)
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“Jung Chang and Jon
Halliday enter a savage indictment drawing on a host of sources, including
important Soviet ones, to blow away the miasma of deceit and ignorance which
still shrouds Mao’s life from many Western eyes…Jung Chang delivers a cry of
anguish on behalf of all of those in her native land who, to this day, are
still not free to speak of these things.”
— Sunday Telegraph (London)
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“A triumph. It is a mesmerizing
portrait of tyranny, degeneracy, mass murder, and promiscuity, a barrage of
revisionist bombshells, and a superb piece of research.”
— Sunday Times (London)
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“The detail and
documentation are awesome. The story that they tell, mesmerizing in its horror,
is the most powerful, compelling, and revealing political biography of modern
times. Few books are destined to change history, but this one will.”
— Daily Mail (London)
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“[A] decisive biography…They
have investigated every aspect of his personal life and career, peeling back
the layers of lies, myths, and what we used to think of as facts…What Chang and
Halliday have done is immense and surpasses, as a biography, everything that
has gone before.”
— Independent (London)
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“Demonstrating the
same pitilessness that they judge to be Mao’s most formidable weapon, they
unstitch the myths that sustained him in power for forty years and that
continue to underpin China’s regime…I suspect that when China comes to terms
with its past this book will have played a role.”
— Telegraph (London)
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“Written with the same deft hand that
enlivened Ms. Chang’s 1991 memoir, Wild Swans.”
— Economist