Word: halliday
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Just so you know where they stand, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday declare in the very first sentence of their impeccably detailed biography of Mao Zedong that he "was responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other 20th-century leader." And that's one of the more positive things they have to say about the man who is still widely revered as the founder of modern China. To Chang and Halliday, Mao was a scheming opportunist who butchered his way to the top, then squandered the lives and wealth of his people in a bungled...
...authors make an impressively strong case. Chang, a former Red Guard and "barefoot doctor" now married to Halliday, a British historian, is known for her 1991 memoir Wild Swans, one of the biggest-selling books of all time (10 million copies, 30 languages). Since its publication Chang has done little except delve into the life of the man who devastated her family in Wild Swans. (Her parents, dedicated Communists, were denounced as class traitors during Mao's Cultural Revolution; her father was tortured, driven insane and worked to death in a labor camp.) Chang's obsession is evident. About...
...didn't fight the Japanese during World War II, according to Chang and Halliday, but instead welcomed their invasion of the mainland. He and Stalin planned to divide China with Japan; Mao would end up running a Soviet puppet state much smaller than today's People's Republic...
...made a fortune in royalties from his writings, which Chinese were forced to read while other authors' works were suppressed. According to Chang and Halliday: "Mao was the only millionaire created in Mao's China...
...Halliday says he will miss the “gentle, good-humored” entertainer...