The Private Life of Chairman Mao by Li Zhisui

About The Book

From 1954 until Mao Zedong's death 22 years later. Dr. Li Zhisui was the Chinese ruler's personal physician. For most of these years, Mao was in excellent health; thus he and the doctor had time to discuss political and personal matters. Dr. Li recorded many of these conversations in his diaries, as well as in his memory. In this book, Dr. Li vividly reconstructs his extraordinary time with Chairman Mao.

Editorial Reviews

“The most revealing book ever published on Mao, perhaps on any dictator in history.”—Professor Andrew J. Nathan, Columbia University

“From now one no one will be able to pretend to understand Chairman Mao's place in history without reference to this revealing account.”—Professor Lucian Pye, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

“Dr. Li does for Mao what the physician Lord Moran's memoir did for Winston Churchill—turns him into a human being. Here is Mao unveiled: eccentric, demanding, suspicious, unregretful, lascivious, and unfailingly fascinating. Our view of Mao will never be the same again.”—Ross Terrill, author of China in Our Time

“An extraordinarily intimate portrait of Mao. [Dr. Li] portrays [Mao's imperial court] as a place of boundless decadence, licentiousness, selfishness, relentless toadying and cutthroat political intrigue.”—Richard Bernstein, The New York Times

“One of the most provocative books on Mao to appear since the publication of Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China.”—Paul G. Pickowicz, The Wall Street Journal

About Author

Li Zhisui

Chinese physician who was the personal physician & confidant of Chairman Mao Zedong. Li received his medical degree from the West Union University Medical School in Sichuan province in 1945 & five years later was named director of the private medical facility that treated China’s top leaders. Beginning in 1954, when Mao chose Li as his personal physician, the two men began to develop a close relationship that lasted until Mao’s death in 1976. During those years, Li compiled a series of diaries. Following Mao’s death, Li held several medical posts before joining his two sons in the USA in 1988. Li’s biography of Mao honored the memory of his late wife, who had urged her husband to share his knowledge with the rest of the world. Relying partly on memory (some 40 diaries were deliberately destroyed during the perilous Cultural Revolution), Li set forth a detailed account of the man he had served for 22 years. The book, which was banned in China as slanderous but became a best-seller in English & several other languages, also provided important details, previously unknown, about many of Mao’s colleagues & of pivotal events that occurred during Mao’s rule.