Detailreich
"Diese neuesten Mao-Biografie ist voller aufschlussreicher Details, in ihr werden dem westlichen Publikum erstmals Informationen aus zahlreichen chinesisch- und russischsprachigen Dokumentensammlungen und Memoiren der vergangenen Jahre zugänglich gemacht – vor allem aber Informationen aus bislang nicht erschlossenen Akten des russischen Staatsarchivs." Welt Online
Neues Licht
"Für ihre umfassende Mao-Biografie haben Alexander V. Pantsov und Steven I. Levine geheime Quellen erschlossen und zahlreiche Gespräche geführt. Ihr faszinierendes Porträt zeigt den Ausnahmepolitiker in neuem Licht." buchjournal
Umfassendes Bild
"The reader of 'Mao' will take away book a clear, nuanced and rounded account of a tireless revolutionary fighter, brilliant politician and bloody social reformer. The scale of his achievements and his crimes make him impossible to sum up, though the authors do their best to take a balanced view: 'Mao transformed China from a semi-colony into an independent and powerful state. … compelling the entire world to respect the Chinese people. He united mainland China after a long period of disintegration, power struggle, and civil wars.' Though the country remained poor and the economy Third World, there was a new pride in being Chinese." The Globe and Mail
Verhältnisse
"Thanks to access to the extensive and formerly secret files from the former Soviet Union, however, this new biography offers considerably more new material. Much centres around the early relationship between the ruling Communists in Moscow and the followers of Mao, a period of ambivalent partnership and shifting alliances. It was an unequal relationship, of course, but the new material establishes even further what a canny and ruthless operator the younger Mao was." Macleans.ca
Leider nicht in China
"Like most good works about China, Pantsov and Levine’s book would do better if it were available to readers in mainland China. But the chances of that are tiny. Since China’s leader Deng Xiaoping decided to preserve the regime’s continuity by committing the party to an official view of its former ruler as '70 per cent right, 30 per cent wrong,' nothing much critical of the Great Helmsman can be published in China." Washington Post
