The complex persona of Chairman Mao--remembered with hate, awe, and even reverence--calls for what the Boston Globe has termed "AJonathan? Spence's engaging blend of history, literature, and biography."Drawing from his expertise in Chinese politics and culture, Spence penetrates Mao's rhetoric and infamous self-will to distill an intimate portrait of a man as withdrawn and mysterious as the emperors he disdained. Spence superbly illuminates Mao, a leader who, at a watershed moment in history, turned the classic Chinese concept of reform through reversal into an endless adventure in upheaval. Mao examines a chilling enigma for historians, students of human nature, and Americans fascinated more than ever by China.