Full name: The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962-1976

Author: Frank Dikotter Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: History, Non Fiction, Politics Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9781632864239 1632864231

After the economic disaster of the Great Leap Forward that claimed tens of millions of lives from 1958-1962, an aging Mao Zedong launched an ambitious scheme to shore up his reputation and eliminate those he viewed as a threat to his legacy. The stated goal of the Cultural Revolution was to purge the country of bourgeois, capitalistic elements he claimed were threatening genuine communist ideology. Young students formed the Red Guards, vowing to defend the Chairman to the death, but soon rival factions started fighting each other in the streets with semiautomatic weapons in the name of revolutionary purity. As the country descended into chaos, the military intervened, turning China into a garrison state marked by bloody purges that crushed as many as one in fifty people. The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962-1976 draws for the first time on hundreds of previously classified party documents, from secret police reports to unexpurgated versions of leadership speeches. Frank Dikotter uses this wealth of material to undermine the picture of complete conformity that is often supposed to have characterized the last years of the Mao era. After the army itself fell victim to the Cultural Revolution, ordinary people used the political chaos to resurrect the market and hollow out the party's ideology. In short, they buried Maoism. By showing how economic reform from below was an unintended consequence of a decade of violent purges and entrenched fear, The Cultural Revolution casts China's most tumultuous era in a wholly new light. This book is part of the "People's Trilogy" series. Here are some other books from this series: "The Tragedy of Liberation" First published in 2013 Rank: , Original star rating: , Adjusted star rating: , Pop rating: "Mao's Great Famine" First published in 2010 Rank: , Original star rating: , Adjusted star rating: , Pop rating: Similar books: The Tragedy of Liberation by Frank Dikotter Restless Empire by Odd Arne Westad Mao's Great Famine by Frank Dikotter Mao's Last Revolution by Roderick MacFarquhar Mao's China and After by Maurice Meisner Treason by the Book by Jonathan D. Spence The Gate of Heavenly Peace by Jonathan D. Spence The Death of Mao by James Palmer Red Star over China by Edgar Snow China by John King Fairbank The Great Wall by John Man The Search for Modern China by Jonathan D. Spence The Great Chinese Revolution 1800-1985 by John King Fairbank The Long March by Sun Shuyun China by John Keay Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff America by Dinesh D'Souza Unfreedom of the Press by Mark R. Levin A Warning by Anonymous