For a champion of the poor, Mao Zedong was born to a wealthy aristocratic family in Shaoshan, Hunan, China. As an adolescent, he once had to defend his father’s farm during a famine from starving peasants who wished to seize his father's land and steal his grain. This same Mao would later promote a policy of land reform that would give those peasants the green light to violently overthrow the rich land owners all over the Chinese countryside.

Inside you will hear about....

• Where revolution was made
• Mao comes into his own
• Mao the pragmatist
• From Nanking to Pearl Harbor
• Consolidating power
• Mao’s stranglehold
• Mao loses face
• And much more!

Mao Zedong was a Marxist revolutionary wishing to overthrow regimes he viewed as imperialist, and yet Mao, often referred to as the Red Emperor, behaved much like totalitarian emperors of China’s medieval past. Mao was a man of intriguing contradiction. This audiobook takes the time to explore them all.