Jung Changs Wild Swans was an extraordinary bestseller throughout the world selling more than 10 million copies & reaching a wider readership than any other book about China. Now she & her husband Jon Halliday have written a groundbreaking biography of Mao Tse-tung. Based on a decade of research & on interviews with many of Maos close circle in China who have never talked before
- & with virtually everyone outside China who had significant dealings with him
- this is the most authoritative life of Mao ever written. It is full of startling revelations exploding the myth of the Long March & showing a completely unknown Mao: he was not driven by idealism or ideology; his intimate & intricate relationship with Stalin went back to the 1920s ultimately bringing him to power; he welcomed Japanese occupation of much of China; & he schemed poisoned & blackmailed to get his way. After Mao conquered China in 1949 his secret goal was to dominate the world. In chasing this dream he caused the deaths of 38 million people in the greatest famine in history. In all well over 70 million Chinese perished under Maos rule
- in peacetime. Combining meticulous history with the story-telling style of Wild Swans this biography makes immediate Maos roller-coaster life as he intrigued & fought every step of the way to force through his unpopular decisions. The reader enters the shadowy chambers of Maos court & eavesdrops on the drama in its hidden recesses. Maos character & the enormity of his behaviour towards his wives mistresses & children are unveiled for the first time. This is an entirely fresh look at Mao in both content & approach. It will astonish historians & the general reader alike.


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Winner of the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2011 Between 1958 & 1962 45 million Chinese people were worked starved or beaten to death. Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward an attempt to catch up with & overtake the Western world in less than fifteen years. It lead to one of the greatest catastrophes the world has ever known. Dikotters extraordinary research within Chinese archives brings together for the first time what happened in the corridors of power with the everyday experiences of ordinary people giving voice to the dead & disenfranchised. This groundbreaking account definitively recasts the history of the Peoples Republic of China. ...

Raised in a desperately poor village during the height of Chinas Cultural Revolution Li Cunxins childhood revolved around the commune his family & Chairman Maos Little Red Book. Until that is Madame Maos cultural delegates came in search of young peasants to study ballet at the academy in Beijing & he was thrust into a completely unfamiliar world. When a trip to Texas as part of a rare cultural exchange opened his eyes to life & love beyond Chinas borders he defected to the United States in an extraordinary & dramatic tale of Cold War intrigue. Told in his own distinctive voice this is Lis inspirational story of how he came to be Maos last dancer & one of the worlds greatest ballet dancers. ...

This is the true story of a poor Chinese peasant boy who plucked unsuspectingly at the age of ten from millions of others across the land to be trained as a ballet dancer turned the situation to his advantage to become one of the world's greatest ballet stars. Simply told with charm humour & compassion & at times this is a great drama. His childhood despite the terrible hardships is drawn with love & affection & contrasts starkly with the seven lonely years of gruelling training at the Peking Dance Academy. At the age of l 8 Li performs at the Houston Ballet school in the US which leads to his dramatic defection. This is a condensed edition specially for younger readers & has an Afterword especially for children. ...

My name is Mike & I am a map addict. There its said... Mike Parker presenter of Radio 4 s On the Map celebrates the richness of all things maps in this fantastic critically-acclaimed read. Have you ever got through an entire day without referring to some kind of navigational aide be it checking the A-Z touring the globe on Google Earth planning a walk or navigating a shopping centre? Maps are everywhere & they are according to self proclaimed map-addict Mike Parker the unsung heroes of life. Here he sings their song celebrating everything cartographic. With a mix of wry observation & hard fact the offbeat & the completely pedantic Parker wages a one-man war against the moronic blandishments of the Sat Nav age. He combines cartographic history & trivia with memoir & oblique observation to create a highly readable expose of the world of maps. Only here can you find out which area has officially been named by the OS as the most boring square kilometre in the land & whether Milton Keynes was really built to pagan alignment. Confessing that his own impressive map collection was founded on a virulent teenage shoplifting habit Parker ponders how a good leftie can be so gung-ho about British cartographic imperialism & establishes himself as defender & saviour of British cartography in the internet age. ...

Having made his name with an exhibition of photographs of Michelin roadmaps
- beautiful works that won praise from every corner
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Maps are not just diagrams of the route from A to B
- from the earliest times they have helped us make sense of our world from
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Map of a Nation tells the story of the creation of the Ordnance Survey map
- the first complete accurate affordable map of the
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When a group of parishioners is burned to death in a German cathedral the US sends in SIGMA FORCE. For this tragedy is more than a case of arson
- someone has stolen the priceless treasure stored in the cathedrals golden reliquary: the bones of the biblical Three Kings. Commander Gray Pierce leads a team on the hunt for the Royal Dragon Court a clandestine aristocratic fraternity of alchemists that dates back to the Middle Ages & seeks to establish a new world order using the mystical bones. Pierce & his team follow a trail that leads from Europes Gothic cathedrals through the remnants of the seven wonders of the ancient world to a mystical place where science & religion unite to unleash a threat not seen since the beginning of time itself...
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Following the hugely successful hardback this extraordinary tale of the father of modern geology looks set to be the non fiction paperback for 2002. Hidden behind velvet curtains above a stairway in a house in Londons Piccadilly is an enormous & beautiful h&-coloured map
- the first geological map of anywhere in the world. Its maker was a farmers son named William Smith. Born in 1769 his life was beset by troubles: he was imprisoned for debt turned out of his home his work was plagiarised his wife went insane & the scientific establishment shunned him. It was not until 1829 when a Yorkshire aristocrat recognised his genius that he was returned to London in triumph. The Map That Changed the World" is his story."
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