Books: The Mao That Roared

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Among China scholars, there has been much debate about the book's editorializing (it was published in Britain in June). Chang and Halliday spent years researching the book and conducted interviews with surviving Mao associates around the world. But for all its detail, this is a one-dimensional portrait, an exhaustive trashing that gives one pause, as does the certainty with which many events are described. "Mao did not care one iota what happened after his death," the authors say. Who could characterize even their own feelings with such certitude?

Yet this is an entertaining and, for the big picture, an ultimately informative book about a figure ever ready for re-examination. It's hard to forgive a man who was so obsessed with petty, vindictive politics that after the 1976 Tangshan earthquake killed hundreds of thousands of Chinese, he presided over a campaign against his rival Deng Xiaoping that demanded that rescuers halt their work to "denounce Deng on the ruins." Maybe it's time to get that fifth finger back in the air again.