Word: mao
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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...
...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 one-sixth of the 800-page Mao: The Unknown Story cites the diaries, intelligence reports, diplomatic messages and other documents she and Halliday unearthed in China, Russia...
...During China's civil war, Mao did not organize and lead the 1934-35 Long March of Red Army remnants to safety from pursuing Nationalists. Instead, the authors say, his relatively small force was left behind by disdainful colleagues and then decimated by his own scheming and incompetence...
...Mao survived the Long March largely because Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek made a secret deal with Stalin: Chiang let the Red Army escape in exchange for the Russians' release of the Generalissimo's son and eventual successor, Chiang Ching-kuo, held hostage in Moscow. Mao, meanwhile, solidified his power by luring a rival Red Army faction to its destruction and burying the survivors alive...
...Mao 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...