Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments
1. China in the World in Mao's Youth
2. From Liberal to Communist, 1912–1921
3. Toward the Peasant Revolution, 1921–1927
4. Establishing Revolutionary Bases: From Jinggangshan to Yan'an, 1928–1935
5. Yan'an, the War of Resistance against Japan, and Civil War, 1935–1949
6. Stabilizing Society and the Transition to Socialism, 1949–1957
7. Great Leap and Restoration, 1958–1965
8. The Cultural Revolution:Politics in Command, 1966–1969
9. The Cultural Revolution: Denouement and the Death of Mao, 1969–1976
10. Reform, Restoration, and the Repudiation of Maoism, 1976–present
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Promotional Information

A succinct account of the life and thought of Mao Zedong in the context of the Chinese revolution, showing Mao's impact on the 20th century world

About the Author

Rebecca E. Karl is Associate Professor of History at New York University. She is the author of Staging the World: Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, and co-translator (with Xueping Zhong) of Cai Xiang's Revolution and Its Narratives: China’s Socialist Literary and Cultural Imaginaries, 1949-1966, all also published by Duke University Press. She co-translated and coedited (with Lydia H. Liu and Dorothy Ko) The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory.

Reviews

"In this succinct and compact narrative of Mao's personal and intellectual development, Rebecca Karl offers an impressive exposition of the formation and evolution of the theory and practice of the Chinese Revolution. Her analysis of ideological tenets in China's revolutionary movement is convincing and more sophisticated than other narratives of Mao's life and thought."--Ban Wang, author of Illuminations from the Past: Trauma, Memory, and History in Modern China "Rebecca Karl has written a lively, readable account of Mao's life and thought, showing how they fit into and affected the twentieth-century world."--Delia Davin, author of Mao Zedong: A Life