Volume 4, Number 7 · May 6, 1965
Mao's China
By Martin Bernal
Mao and the Chinese Revolution
by Jerome Ch'en
Oxford, 420 pp., $7.50
The Birth of Communist China
by C.P. Fitzgerald
Penguin, 288 pp., $1.25
China and the Bomb
by Morton Halperin
Praeger, 166 pp., $4.95
To most Westerners China is not a part of the known world and Mao is not a figure of our time. The ignorant believe he is the leader of a host of martians whose sole occupation is plotting the destruction of civilization and the enslavement of mankind. The more sophisticated say that he is the builder of a new world which will somehow, some day, be of great significance, but having said that, they turn their minds back to the present, thinking—perhaps rightly—that China is too different and difficult to begin to comprehend. Thus writers swarm around the life of a minor figure like Churchill, telling us a thousand times stories we already know but love to hear, while on the other hand there is little information available about Mao Tse-tung, who has had a far greater impact on the post-war world.
Review, 2276 words
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