The Chinese Revolution was a massive shift in social, political, cultural, and economic thinking and in the institutions of Chinese society. The Revolution was led by Mao Tse-Tung and his followers and took place in stages, putting certain Marxist and Leninist conceptions into practice in China and involving both a violent overthrow of the existing government and the long process of transforming Chinese society into a socialist enterprise. Different writers have examined these changes and the role of Mao in effecting them. Stuart Schram in Mao Tse-Tung (1966) examines the issue in terms of the man - his life, his education, his thinking, and how his view of the world was formed and would motivate his actions. Jerome Ch'n in Mao and the Chinese revolution (1965) also considers the Revolution in terms of Mao and the development of his thinking, but he gives much more emphasis to the intellectual life of Mao, including presenting selections of Mao's poetry.
Stuart R. Schram was born in Minnesota in 1924 and attended the University of Minnesota as an undergraduate before receiving his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University in 1954. He has since carried out research at the Centre d'+tude des Relations Internationales of the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques in Paris.
Jerome Ch'n at the time of his writing of this book was a lecturer in Asian history at the University of Leeds. He had earlier written several articles on aspects of Chinese history in scholarly journals. In writing this book, he has tried not to write a "political" book, as he puts it, even though it must of necessity deal with politics and military affairs along with other aspects of Mao's life. He states that this is also not a straightforward biography, since it is impossible to separate Mao from the intricacies of Chinese politics and warfare. Ch'n also tries not to judge Mao, believing that it is too soon to make those sorts of jud...