Profiles in Power

Mao was instrumental in shaping the modern world

• Examines Mao as a revolutionary general and founder of the leader of the world's largest nation.
• Explores Mao's career as an astute and often brutal political manipulator .
• Looks at how Mao became a victim of his own obsession with power.

Shaun Breslin explores the career of Mao Zedung (1892-1976) from a number of angles, as revolutionary general, as founder and leader of the world's largest nation for almost thirty convulsive years, as ideologist, as astute and often brutal political manipulator and ultimately as a victim of his own obsession with power. There are two stories here, how Mao established a communist party state in mainland China and what he accomplished as its leader. The triumph of 1949 was won after a quarter-century of epic struggle. Not only did Mao and the Communists withstand the attacks of the ruling nationalists party and Japanese invasion in 1937, But Mao also had to wage his own battle within the movement against those who looked to Moscow to show the way forward. To survive such circumstances was achievement enough and Mao's overwhelming victory helps us understand his subsequent status in the China he created. But after establishing a new regime, Mao embarked on a number of radical experiments to transform China and classless society. Even after failures, he was determined to ensure that his revolutionary radicalism would outlive him. Ironically, his extreme actions undermined it and Maosim, and Mao's China, died wit him in 1976. "Mao" is a crisply written and very interesting appraisal of one of the most controversial shapers of the modern world. And, as the othertitles in the "Profiles in Power" series, it is not a biography, though inevitably it contains much biographical material, it instead analyzes the major features, achievements and failures of Mao's career.