Who was Mao?

Although I do not intend to buy the new book on Mao - "Mao: The Unknown Story" - by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, I still read with curiosity a longish "edited extract" - 1-1/2 pages of broadsheet newspaper (The Australian, 11-12 June 2005) - of Mao from birth to death. I am no so much curious about Mao but this book on him.

After reading it, I must say I am disappointed. The readers are told that Mao was lazy as a kid, became a communist not because of passionate belief but by luck, was not averse to killing people, enjoyed decadent lifestyle, put the blame on others ... Philip Hensher, who must have read the book in its entirety and has written a review - Biography of Mao is a work of unanswerable authority - says "Mao is comprehensively discredited from beginning to end in small ways and large; a murderer, a torturer, an untalented orator, a lecher, a destroyer of culture, an opium profiteer, a liar."

In my opinion, such treatment trivialises the complex personality of Mao and the atrocious legacy he left. It is almost as if the central character of this biography was a dictator of a small African state, rather than someone who, as the book says, "for decades held absolute power over the lives of one-quarter of the world's population, was responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other 20th century leader".

One interesting thing about this "edited extract" is that it has not a single word on the Communists ousting the Nationalists (and the rise of Mao to the top of the Party) and the Cultural Revolution. I am sure that the book has specific chapters on these two periods. It is just funny that instead, the article has enough space to talk about Mao's Special Account where he stashed the royalities from his writings and made himself the only millionaire in China.