This is now probably the definitive political history in English of the Cultural Revolution. It brings a clarity to the chronology which something like Dikotter’s book on the Cultural Revolution does not. It does not go much into the social or economic aspects of the CR but it is not trying to. What you get is a very close analysis of events sometimes day by day or even hour by hour. It has helped me pick apart what is often presented as one undifferentiated period. Highly recommended.

Very interesting. A great analysis of Communist China under the leadership of Chairman Mao.

Het blijft een onbegrijpelijk tijdvak voor me.

Thoroughly researched and engagingly presented.

This is an overview of the Cultural Revolution, but as you might guess for a 10 year period, there is still quite a lot to talk about and this book is still big. Much of the size has to do with the citations and bibliography, which is extensive if not at times featuring sources of occasional questionable veracity.

The book is a history from above and that is where Macfarquhar excels. Sometimes when he speculates about the motivations or behavior of the “mob” he (in my view) loses sight of human agency and lets his feelings and perspective on China and the CCP known.

When sticking to the overall big picture, this book covers a lot of ground and for some might be the only book you need, if you just want a overview and timeline. It’s fairly dry scholarly history but the events themselves are fascinating and overall the book is not bogged down in data and statistics, making for an interesting and do-able read.

I find this book too detailed with chronological events, and not helpful in understanding the cultural revolution.
For an understanding of why the cultural revolution took place, I recommend Han Suyin's "The morning deluge" published in 1972, and Robert Tay Lifton's "Revolutionary immortality: Mao Tse-tung and the chinese revolution".
Its interesting to know that MacFarquhar had not been to China, and Schoenhals was there only once for a year. In contrast, Han Suyin was born in China, lived in China, and visited China often.

I had no idea.

Everyone knows about Mao. He's on all the RMB notes, the Beatles sing about him, his face is now emblazoned on the ironic t-shirts of liberal arts students across the world. He is everywhere in China.

Like all dictators, you get the idea that he was officially a great man and unofficially a real son of a bitch. It is commonplace, when discussing dictators, to hear "pragmatic, realpolitik" opinions about the positive economic or political impact of these leaders. Not all bad, one is supposed to conclude.

Well, Mao is as close to "all bad" as I've encountered. Certainly, beyond his military days before 1952 I've seen little evidence of his good side. This is an admittedly emotional stance, however.

Mao's Last Revolution is a serious book about a very specific period: 1966-1976 and the Cultural Revolution. It is not strictly "academic" - any such work would probably span three or four times as much as this already substantial tome. The authors do, however, take care to detail each important event on a month-to-month basis, introducing dozens of key players and political movements through most of China's provinces.

Although the prose is easy to read, the amount of detail and the dry tone can bore you down. The unbelievable events that are successfully portrayed, however, compensate more than enough to keep you going. The details that color the narrative make a world of difference to just reading the Cultural Revolution wikipedia.

I can't recommend this book more if you are really interested in this period.

The history of the Cultural Revolution is thus being continually revised. It is best that you do not try to write a history, but only to look back upon your own experiences. Furthermore, it is very likely that when people have forgotten about it, it will make a comeback, and people who have never gone crazy will go crazy, and people who have never been oppressed will oppress or be oppressed. This is because madness has existed since the birth of humanity, and it is simply a question of when it will flare up again.

One of the more interesting threads through the Cultural Revolution is the struggle between Russian and Chinese Communism. Arguably, the CR started primarily as a response to Khrushchev's Secret Speech denouncing Stalin, a man Mao modelled most of his political beliefs after. From this tensions flare up between the two countries with a couple of border skirmishes near North Korea, China realizing that it cannot depend upon Russia. In a strange twist of fate, this pushes China into the arms of the US, Nixon's famous visit happening during the drawn out end of the CR. The chaos and degradation of industry in the period leads to Deng Xiaoping being disillusioned with Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy (while being exiled from the party early in the CR, keeping his hands clean of any of the mess of it). Deng's clean hands and relatively moderate views put him in a perfect position to take power after Mao, pushing his industrialization efforts and further coupling of the Chinese and American economies. The ironic end of Mao's push for a culture of anti-revisionism is China's capitalist turn.

A thorough, if somewhat dry, look at the Cultural Revolution. The big plus is that it draws primarily on Chinese sources and accounts, the dullness of historical completeness is punctuated by eye witness accounts of the horrible things that happened.

相见恨晚，的确是研究文革的抗鼎之作。对文革的缘由，经过和结果概括的很到位。强烈推荐

Exhaustively detailed, but reasonably readable, narrative of the Cultural Revolution that shook China from the mid-60 to the mid-70s. The authors avoid sensationalism and voyeurism for the most part, balancing the internal politics swirling around Mao with the events unfolding in the cities and countryside. I'll supplement with The World Turned Upside Down, telling the story from Chinese perspectives, but my guess is this will stay the go-to history. The political angle is clearly anti-Mao, but not in a doctrinaire manner, and I can't imagine any other angle that deals honestly with the facts.

It is clear the writers have done their homework on the Culture Revolution, and this book made me appreciate what a terrible time that was in China. But like a lot of academic books, its writing leaves a lot to be desired.