gments about the leader. The approach places considerable emphasis on the development of Mao's thought, and the section including Mao's poetry (translated by Ch'n with Michael Bullock) demonstrates this by offering a direct source for aspects of Mao's thinking and character.
The Schram book covers the same basic territory and tries to be inclusive by covering Mao from childhood through the formation of the People's Republic of China. The political underpinnings of Mao's thought derived from events that occurred in his childhood and youth, and Schram traces these concepts and shows how the thinking of the man was formed. Mao is presented as a man dedicated to one driving ambition--to reform and transform Chinese society as a way of liberating its citizens from the yoke of tradition. Mao was guided by ideas of Western origin. He was fired by the desire to make his country a leading one in the world, redress for centuries during which it remained away from the rest of the world and ignored as a quaint but unimportant force in world affairs. In taking this view, though, Mao was to a degree showing the traditional value the Chinese had always placed on their culture, though he had a different view of this matter and saw a need to transform th
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