"The most revealing book ever published on Mao, perhaps on any dictator in history."--Professor Andrew J. Nathan, Columbia University
From 1954 until Mao Zedong's death twenty-two years later, Dr. Li Zhisui was the Chinese ruler's personal physician, which put him in daily--and increasingly intimate--contact with Mao and his inner circle. in The Private Life of Chairman Mao, Dr. Li vividly reconstructs his extraordinary experience at the center of Mao's decadent imperial court.
"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 fascinating. Our view of Mao will never be the same again."--Ross Terrill, author of China in Our Time"An extraordinarily intimate portrait of Mao. Dr. Li] portrays Mao's imperial court] as a place of boundless decadence, licentiousness, selfishness, relentless toadying and cutthroat political intrigue."--Richard Bernstein, The New York Times"One of the most provocative books on Mao to appear since the publication of Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China."--Paul G. Pickowicz, The Wall Street Journal