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From the author of Wild Swans and her husband comes an extremely widely researched account of Mao Zedong's life starting from his early life growing up in a family of peasants, to becoming a scholar, to his eventual iron-fisted rule of China. The book contains little known accounts from many close to Mao as well as outside critics who saw the side that the Chinese public was barely allowed to think, let alone see. Any readers of this review need to keep in mind that this is one of the first accounts of Communist China I have read which makes it difficult to read critically into a lot of what Chang is saying as I have nothing to compare it to.
One of the first arguments put forward by the authors is that Communist China was largely initially funded by Russia under Stalin. Convicing arguments such as telegrams between the two leaders, Russian involvement in the CCP (the communist party of China) and the beginnings of Russian backing in weapons manufacture as well as the ultimate goal of possessing the atomic bomb which luckily never came to fruition. While I can't comment on the accuracy of these claims; the argument seemed to have considerable backing, much of which is still not admitted by officials in China today. It becomes clear that even during the closing stages of World War II, Mao and his followers were more committed to building up forces against the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-Shek than partnering up to beat Japan once and for all. Despite elements of Russian resistance, Mao was able to recover his own army to overthrow the Nationalist government in 1949.
The book also offers a fresh perspective on Mao's beliefs through a combination of communications with other party members and other countries and his set of aims for his own Communist state and to eventually establish China as a super power. The means through which this was done are perhaps the most shocking. Mao continued to offer around 6% of his country's money to aid to the Russians and to other, smaller communist states. While this happened, the peasants farming the food to send overseas were being worked quite literally to the bone and tens of millions died in famine which was seemingly caused by Mao's policy of increasing exports of food every year until there was not even enough for his own citizens. The famine only stopped when some of Mao's top staff more or less forced him to stop the exports. They did this at the cost to their own lives, however, and Mao was to pay them back for this later.
Chang and Halliday also offer a useful account of the Cultural Revolution which was run through Mao's fourth wife known mostly as Madame Mao. This consisted of a huge clamp-down on books, music, plays and movies where the only books allowed were ones which espoused Maoism. This book has been criticised by many for blaming everything on Mao, but I don't think this is necessarily true; there were many personalities explored in this book such as Madame Mao, Lin Biao and Chou who clearly stayed with Mao through some of the most vicious periods of his rule and Madame Mao is definitely painted as a paticularly outwardly nasty woman who did whatever Mao told her to. Many people are criticised in this book for their role and it becomes clear that without his closest staff, Mao would have been unable to wreak the amount of destruction he did.
One of the things I would criticise about this book is the bits towards the end where Chang uses evidence to sum up what she believed to be what Mao was thinking at certain times. Obviously what he was thinking is something no one will ever know and no amount of biographical reconstruction can show us his thoughts about any one particular time or person.
Despite this, the immense amount of research that went into this book involving a decade spent in China interviewing various people is extremely impressive. This is really the first in-depth reading I have done on this period of China and will definitely be looking for other books to further cement my knowledge. I would recommend this to anyone with an interest in China, Mao himself or Communist regimes.
This is probably one of the more interesting fiction books I have read in awhile. It is a story written in a memoir style in the perspective of a man, Johnny who is recollecting the years of his childhood and early adulthood and particular his best friend Owen Meany. The memoir-like fashion is believable as a real story because the narrator seems to have difficulty setting events out and starts by telling the reader everything and then trying to more realistically separate the story out into parts.
Owen is a dwarf-like child, incredibly small for his age with an incredibly unique voice which is a symbol throughout the book for both his power and what turns out to be his "destiny." Owen throws what seems to be an ill-fated baseball at the beginning with astonishing results and this also becomes symbolic of his role throughout the book in relation to the narrator. As the book progresses Owen becomes more and more convinced of something - that he is the guiding hand of God and that his fate is entirely in the hands of God. The book also contains some useful testimony about religion - Owen does not behave like a monk or anointed one but rather is critical of the presentation of different religions in his hometown and in his experiences.
As the boys grow up into the era of Kennedy and the Vietnam War, Owen becomes more and more convinced of what he is meant to do. An interesting concept emerges - that of blindly following what he believes to be his destiny while believing it wholeheartedly and the question seems to beckon - how can someone have a destiny if there manifests a choice whether to follow it or not?
I think this novel was slightly too long, although it did keep me reading all the way through because of what I knew was coming. The voice of the narrator begs to the very end but in the last few chapters I was beginning to wonder if there would ever be a forseeable conclusion.
An enjoyable read, none the less.
This amazing memoir is written by Miep Gies who helped to hide the Frank family during World War II. Gies recently died at the age of 101, the last person known of to have actually met the Frank family before they were tragically lost during the Nazi Holocaust. Gies wrote events in this book as she remembered them; Anne Frank as well as her entire family had obviously made a lasting impression of her and their fate through her words becomes representative of the fate of millions.
Gies begins the book with a short account of her life; as a child during World War I and later being adopted by a family in Amsterdam and eventually moving there for good. She then shows her first connection with Otto Frank (Anne's father) and how she eventually came to meet the entire Frank family. Gies has a purely touching writing style which means this book is both easy to read and emotionally understandable. For anyone who has read Anne Frank's diary; this is a version of events from someone who perhaps saw the political situation more clearly than Anne would have at such a young age and Gies does a remarkable job of providing the background to what would become the most famous personal account to come out of the Holocaust. Although she describes her acts as unheroic, it is clear for anyone reading the book that she risked her life in a way many people in the same era would not have dared.
This book has the capability of bringing many people to tears I would think, not only because of the way it is written but also because it is a historically accurate and poignant story.
This is a book I have been meaning to read for a long time and in one of my fits of materialistic book purchasing at Vic Books I bought The God Delusion. I'm already a pretty stout atheist so I didn't read this from a religious perspective and was just curious as to Dawkins' arguments against God and organised religion in general.
I'll start by saying parts of this book are pretty heavy-handed. I can think of a few people who would put it down in disgust after reading the first chapter. In trying to dispel the notion of religion having a higher place in society, Dawkins attacks the foundations of religion from the very beginning of the book and continues to supplement his arguments with further facts. I thought Dawkins argument was majorly flawed in several respects and his overview of the different facets of religion (in particular fundamentalist Christianity) was skimmed over in not much depth and he tended to assume things about believers that aren't necessarily true. He also from the beginning tended to attack parents who raised their children as a particular religion; while I can imagine this is a significant problem he compared the anecdotal experience of one women and made it fact. He stipulated that religious abuse was just as harmful if not more harmful than sexual abuse by priests and he also seemed to doubt the validity of the trauma of childhood sexual abuse to try to make his argument stronger.
While I agreed with the conclusions Dawkins came to, his way of presenting his points did not read like a logical argument to me. He made atheism into a fundamentalist religion unto itself or presented it as such any way. His more long-winded arguments often turned into fallacies that were spread out throughout the book and his ultimate denial of religion having a place in future society was unrealistic.
I would recommend this book to religious and non-religious people alike, as it does have some interesting insights and facts into theism and atheism but it is perhaps best to keep your critical mind going while you read this book.
