The Private Life of Chairman Mao : The Memoirs of Mao's Personal Physician by...

Description: Item DetailTHE PRIVATE LIFE OF CHAIRMAN MAO By his personal physician Dr Li Zhisui TRANSLATED BY TAI HUNG- CHAO FOREWORD BY ANDREW I NATHAN with the editorial assistance of Anne F Thurston Copyright © 1994 by Dr. Li Zhisui Map of China copyright © 1994 by David Lindroth Inc. Map of Zhongnanhai copyright © 1994 by Anita Karl and Jim Kemp Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Li, Zhisui. The private life of Chairman Mao: the memoirs of Mao's personal physician / Dr. Li Zhisui; translated by Professor Tai Hung-chao; with the editorial assistance of Anne F. Thurston; foreword by Professor Andrew J. Nathan. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-679-40035-4 1. Mao, Zedong, 1893-1976. 2. Heads of state China-Biography. 1. Tai, Hung-chao. II. Thurston, Anne F. III. Title. DS778.M3L5164 1994 951.05- dc20 94-29970 Manufactured in the United States of America 24 6 8 9 7 5 3 First Edition Book design by Victoria Wong Item ConditionPages are pristine. Hardcover is pristine. Dust jacket shows some bumping to edges and slight fading on spine. One or two cuts to edges. Please see photos for the condition of the dust jacket as this is part of the description. SummaryFrom 1954 until Mao Zedong's death twenty-two years later, Dr. Li Zhisui was the Chinese ruler's personal physician, which put him in almost daily and increasingly intimate contact with Mao and his inner circle. For most of these years, Mao's health was excellent; thus he and the doctor had time to discuss political and personal matters. Dr. Li recorded many of these conversations in his diaries as well as in his memory. In The Private Life of Chairman Mao he vividly reconstructs his extraordinary experience. The result is a book that will profoundly alter our view of Chairman Mao and of China under his rule. Dr. Li clarifies numerous long-standing puzzles, such as the true nature of Mao's feelings toward the United States and the Soviet Union. He describes Mao's deliberate rudeness toward Khrushchev when the Soviet leader paid his secret visit to Beijing in 1958, and we learn here, for the first time, how Mao came to invite the American table tennis team to China, a decision that led to Nixon's historic visit a few months later. We also learn why Mao took the disastrous Great Leap Forward, which resulted in the worst famine in recorded history, and his equally strange reason for risking war with the United States by shelling the Taiwanese islands of Quemoy and Matsu. Dr. Li supplies surprising portraits of Zhou Enlai and many other top leaders. He describes Mao's perverse relationship with his wife, and gives us insight into the sexual politics of Mao's court. We witness Mao's bizarre death and the even stranger events that followed it. Dr. Li tells of Mao's remarkable gift for inti-macy, as well as of his indifference to the suffering and deaths of millions of his fellow Chinese, including old comrades. Readers will find here a full and accurate account of Mao's sex life, and of such personal details as his peculiar sleeping arrangements and his dependency on barbiturates. To millions of Chinese, Mao was more god than man. Yet for Dr. Li, Mao was all too human, and soon the doctor came to despise this great tyrant for his indifference to human life. Unlike Stalin, Mao seldom ordered the death of individuals, and, unlike Hitler, he did not seek to destroy entire populations, but in his harebrained attempts to remake the world, Mao was responsible for the deaths of more people than either Hitler or Stalin. Professor Andrew Nathan of Columbia University writes, "[Dr. Li's] combination of access, insight, and detachment makes this the most revealing book ever published on Mao, perhaps on any dictator in history." Dr. Li's intimate account of this monster is itself an event in history. About Dr. Li and the Editorial AssistantBorn in Beijing in 1919, Dr. Li ZHISUl is descended from a long line of eminent doctors his great-grandfather was physician to the Chinese emperor. Dr. Li received his M.D. in 1945, and in 1950 became the director of the top-secret medical facility that serviced Mao Zedong's inner circle. Dr. Li was Chairman Mao's personal physician from 1954 until the Chairman's death in 1976. In 1980, Dr. Li became deputy vice-president of the Chinese Medical Association and of the Gerontological Society of China, and he was the chief editor of both the National Medical Journal of China and the Chinese edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association. In 1988 he moved to Chicago, where he now lives with his two sons. ANNE F. THURSTON, Who assisted Dr. Li editorially, is a distinguished scholar of recent Chinese history and cul-ture, has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Woodrow Wilson Center, and the United States Institute of Peace, and was recently awarded a MacArthur Foundation grant. Dr. Thurston's published works include Enemies of the People: The Ordeal of China's Intellectuals During the Great Cultural Revolution and A Chinese Odyssey: The Life and Times of a Chinese Dissident. Reviews"This work has tremendous value. It opens our eyes to the real nature of the man and gives an exciting account of life in Mao Zedong's inner circle. From now on no one will be able to pretend to understand Chairman Mao's place in history without reference to this revealing account of what Mao was really like as a man. As a result of Dr. Li's intensely honest account of what he saw and experienced we now have a solid, multidimensional picture of MaoZedong.-PROFESSOR LUCIAN PYE, Massachusetts Institute of Technology "The most revealing book ever published on Mao, perhaps on any dictator in history.-PROFESSOR ANDREw J. NATHAN, Columbia University "Dr. Li does for Mao what the physician Lord Moran's memoir did for Winston Churchill turns him into a human being. Here is Mao unveiled: eccentric, demanding, suspicious, unregretful, lascivious, and unfailingly fas-cinating. Our view of Mao will never be the same again."-Ross TERRILL, author of China in Our Time Purchase information**When you purchase this item, Phoenix Forward Furnishings will donate 10% of the final purchase price to the American National Red Cross charity. Thank you for your help in making the world a better place! Please visit our store to view all of our items at: https://www.ebay.com/str/phoenixforwardfurnishings

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