a man who is above all marked by extraordinary determination, the will to dominate, the will to succeed. he was several men and they lived several lives compressed into one long life to do somebody also compressed immense changes in china over a short

period. in china he was born with a feudal empire which hasn't really changed for 2000 years. when he left, when he died it was a major power. a member of the u.n. security council with satellites, with intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. c-span: how long have you spent in china? >> guest: i first went to china 90 and 77. i open their office and then i have been back for periods of up to a couple of months pretty regularly. almost every year for the last decade or so, less often in the previous 10 years. c-span: this is a big low, close to 800 pages. >> guest: it's not supposed to

seem like that. c-span: is their new material in there? >> guest: oh yeah three of the is there has not been a new tiger field mouse for 20 years. the last one, the last major biography was in 1980 and over the last 20 years, so much has emerged. facts, documents, memoirs by people who were around mao. huge areas which we didn't really understand our winter stood wrongly are now much more clear. it's possible for the first time as you said it's a long book and he lived a very long life. a jampacked life. in a way he lived the life of a character in an epic novel and there was so much to it.

c-span: how long did it take you? >> guest: six ears. i was working on other things. i had worked for the bbc for some of that time but it was six ears, the last two or two and a half years doing nothing but. c-span: is your name -- is that a chinese name? >> guest: that's a chinese name. c-span: where did you meet her? >> guest: i met her in beijing in 1979 during the democracy movement that happened with this great outpouring of free expression and war posters criticizing this and that. it was a battle like 1968 in paris. 10 years ago by chance 10 years later i should say i met her again in paris and once, but

twice you can do much about. c-span: what role did she played? >> guest: she played a very major role in two ways. my chinese is like a 6-year-old. it's not wonderful, so she went through reams of documents with me and for all the trips that i did going to places with me. she was in the middle in that. and also because she is chinese and she has a whole network of chinese friends it made it vastly easier to talk to people who would not normally have talked to a foreigner. the chinese had become much more outgoing and much more willing to discuss sensitive topics privately, publicly or privately even so it makes an alarmist difference if you have, if you

are chinese or you have a network. c-span: how many years was he the ultimate total top power in china? >> guest: 1949 was one he proclaimed the people's republic of china and he died in 1976 so that's 27. in the economist areas he was an undisputed leader really from 1937 to 38. c-span: what year was the? >> guest: 1893. born under the empire in very much a classical education. he was made to learn great chunks. yes, that's him. that's him at the age of about 17 or 18. it's the earliest photograph we have. at the time of the revolution, the revolution which overturned the empire in 1911.

break out what were the circumstances? >> guest: the empire had been crumbling and rotting away for a century but at least at the bin there for the last decades of the 19th century. a huge rebellion, 20 million people had died. the best part of a century later you can still see the demographic effects of the slaughter and this was 1853. in the 60s there was a big muslim rebellion. in 1908, the emperor died, a child emperor came to the throne and there was more and more pressure on the throne and the

revolution itself started in not sober, october the tenth, 1911. really in the muddled way these things often do start. the conspirators were betrayed. some of them were arrested. some of the others decided to go for the army and rebel. the man that they were ousted take charge of their rebellion and lead the rebellion he was so scared that he disguised himself as a scholar. most of these things earlier all of these things had fizzled out. this one kept going. from wilhelm it's spread and mao was present in the capital of conan when that city fell to the rebels again in a very disorganized fashion. he left a wonderful account of

seeing the battle outside of the city walls, the troops storming the gates, the rebel storming the gates and bursting in and eventually hoisting a flag over the governor's palace. actually all of that was later imagination. it didn't happen that way. it was a muddled mess but he did see the flag lifted when the city fell. c-span: who is -- >> guest: he was an old old revolutionary born i think in 1866. he was the leader of the nationalist and he was the man who became president of china's first president of the republic in china in 1912 after the emperor out of the cave. the party he founded, the nationalist party was later to be taken over by chiang kai-shek , later to be the great

opponent of the communist civil war in china that followed was between economists and the nationalist and under chiang kai-shek set up an alternative regime in taiwan, still in power to this day. c-span: how big is china today in population? >> guest: a good question, 1.3 million. that single continent is quite important come 8 billion. c-span: how many people live in taiwan? >> guest: around 20 million. the difference is important because peoplesoft and say look taiwan is a democracy. it is and don't decry decry the taiwanese achievement, it's quite considerable but it's really happen a lot sooner 15 years after chiang kai-shek's death. he kept a dictatorial stranglehold on that island now you have to think one island

with a lot of foreign aid up against 1,300,000,000 people in a huge disparate country which is ari's been difficult to rule. it's not. it's apples and oranges. you can't really compare. c-span: there's a photo in the book of the village. it's really not the village. it's the farm, the original farmhouse of mao tse-tung's father. where is this? >> guest: it's in a place which is about 30 miles from the capital and what is interesting is the farmhouse is considerably to an extent being reconstructed but it is as it was. what's interesting is it is so big you know, mao had his own room and his brothers had their own rooms. it's very unusual for a family,

farmer to be as prosperous as mao's father was so mao was not the child of a poor peasants. he was the child of quite a well-off landlord rave. c-span: you sealed the map where the non-is and where taiwan is right up because. >> guest: that's right. maps of china aren't away misleading because the place is so big and the map is small but good man in the center, center south of china. c-span: what was his father like? >> guest: if we were to believe mao his father was a skinflint bigoted narrow-minded tyrant and mao was constantly rebelling. that is a formal picture with the little round cap and button and apron a lower garment over

his trousers and a soap jacket traded. c-span: who is that next him to him while i have the picture here? >> guest: on the other side, the next picture? mao was on the right of the picture. he is the tall one. his mother sitting and his two brothers so that is the mao family. he actually looks quite like his mother. his mother is a very rounded face and mao had that same rounded look but mao was exceedingly ungrateful to his father because his father put up with him. his father was impossible but actually mao must have been a terrible cross to bear as a young man. and certainly was constantly defending against traditional precepts of propriety and good behavior. c-span: when was his first marriage?

>> guest: his first marriage was when he was 14 to a peasant girl. it was an arranged marriage, range by his parents and very little is known about it read she died soon afterwards. mao by his own account refused to live with her. she by some accounts three months after they were married i think that's correct from the people i would say two years but in any event it didn't last. according to mao it wasn't consummated, what search wasn't to knows but it's something he consciously tried to push under the table. >> host: . c-span: here's a photo with his second wife and child. >> guest: the two little boys and there was a third child warren who died when you was young of dysentery. the daughter of his favorite

professor and the man who influenced him greatly a very liberal open-minded man and they were married in 1920 the winter of 1920 and live together until 1927. 1927 was when the real clash between the nationalists and economists began. chiang kai-shek cracks down in a massacre of communist in shanghai and the communists went underground. mao went to the mountains and begin a guerrilla struggle. she stayed with the children and mao then married again and he had two wives at the same time. these things are looked at fairly tolerantly. the third wife started living

with him when she was quite young, 18 or 19 years old on the very remote land called kin yan chen were mao and his guerrillas had taken refuge. two years after mao and she came together shang chi way was arrested in around that by the nationalist leader in cheng jen and executed along with mao's adopted sister. the children were smuggled to shanghai because otherwise they might well have been killed as well. things were not done by half measure in those days. it was very brutal. the children were smuggled to shanghai. they had a very rough time because the communist party was being dismantled and was under

tremendous pressure. part of the time they lived on the streets and in the mid-30s one of the two children the younger boy became mentally disturbed and is still alive but has remained with serious mental troubles all of his life. the other boy came back but we are getting ahead of ourselves in the 1940s, came back to china and was with mao. c-span: and he has a fourth wife. we might as well talk about her briefly. >> guest: the fourth wife, she was an interesting woman. she went right through with them and she bore him children. then she decided she had actually had enough of mao. she walked out on mao and he was devastated. c-span: this is his fourth right here on the screen. >> guest: the fourth wife, he

started living with her shortly after she left him and he set himself later it was an extremely bad choice. she was a young shanghai actress with a devious past and there were strong efforts made within the party to discourage or say was this the right thing to do. you do not tell someone like mao if he's the party leader of the communist party there's no way you can say you can't marry this one. he had made up his mind and it turned out to be really a disastrous marriage. she had one child but by the early 1950s they were effectively estranged and later, much much later towards the end of his life mao used her as a political tool. he exploited her as a political

instrument because he knew that she was completely loyal to him. the one person who depended on him completely and whom he could have complete trust in so he used her for his poetical dirty work we will put it that way. c-span: she was a member of the gang of four? >> guest: she tried to use him for her political gain. it was one of the adjusting relationships. riker at what point, do you remember the year they actually mary? >> guest: they didn't go through marriage ceremony. we talk about marriage. mao married several times. i am not at all sure he was actually ever formally married except his present wife and they were never actually married. they started living together. i think he did warmly marry the professor's daughter because i don't think the family would have stood for anything

different. they started living together and with -- they started living together and they were deemed to be married. when mao invited his colleagues to a dinner which chang chen played the role and that was it traded. c-span: it's where in 11 years of booknotes there's a quote they can't read because of language and i think you know i'm talking about. there's a quote in this book that you got from the doctor about -- that quote about what he does with his private parts in reference to women. you say the whole area we talked about for five women in his bed. explain that whole lifestyle that he had and the doctors look. >> guest: the doctors book was the first time we have heard about them than there was some skepticism. in the west it was accepted but

in china you have people coming out of the woodwork and saying this enormous bed and you know that is the bed which was left in his study by people who knew him said the bed he actually used with even bigger and if we believe it, which i think we should that he did like to have several young women, up to five young women in bed with him and of course his books since his books were important to him and there were always books on his bed no matter what he was doing. a large bed would clearly require it so mao both chang chen did not work, this fourth marriage and you can say is part of the imperial tradition. i think it's much more innocents like groupies and modern pop

music stars or whatever. mao found that with young women he could have a normal contact that was tonight. you may question the word normal that sexual is a normal human activity in just about every other aspect of all his activities were politically regulated or motivated or had a hidden purpose. this was terribly basic, terribly earthy in which he had a human relationship with other human beings rate from this point of view that was it. but young peasant soldiers, again he had a sort of surrogate family and he had a normal family long long ago. i think that was his side of things. there was also the business he knew he was getting old. he had the power. he could do it and it always

done it so the girls themselves, sleeping with god because that was how he was seen probably didn't seem wrong. c-span: there a lot of terms you use it are for mayanne i want us us -- way to tell us what they are quickly. what was the great leap forward? >> guest: the great leap forward was an economic movement to launch in 1958 where mao tried to mobilize the chinese people with the strength of their hands and their spirit to work economic miracles. everyone would make steel, grain yields that were out of sight. c-span: what was the august harvest uprising?

>> guest: we are going back in time, 1927 when the fighting between the nationalists and the communist began. the autumn harvest uprising was the failed, desperately failed uprising which mao tried to foment conan -- hunan when he retreated into the mountains. write to what was fake long march? >> guest: the long march was a very long march from 1934 to 1935. economists had a base in southern china and the nationalists were at the point of wiping them out. when the communists decided to make a strategic retreat and it turned out to be a march at 6000 miles which took them across china to the northwest.

i have traveled the whole route of the long march and it's a great thing to do if anyone's thinking of it. it's fascinating. c-span: do they have a march? >> guest: no is not that there is an excellent book by house in salisbury on the march which has the details of where they went but it is possible to follow that march and they went through the most remote backward areas because those were the areas where the nationalist forces were the weakest over the mountains through the grasslands which is a terrible area of swamp and bob of 10000 feet between taiwan and szechuan and finally into desert country in the northwest which is from 1935 they had their headquarters.

c-span: what was the cultural revolution? >> guest: the cultural revolution was mao's fila tends to make sure that china remained on an ideologically purely red ideological path. c-span: the first thing i noticed was how much the russians had to do with a lot of the early beginnings. guess that there would have been no communist party if they would not have artificially created it. the communist international set up by lenin. you got to remember this was a time where rush of the soviet union was under enormous pressure with the western countries. there were russians fighting against the communists. it was setup in order to promote the soviet unions cause abroad and forge forged links with workers movement and create calmness parties. c-span: what you're? >> guest: 1919.

bright coba bolshevik revolution. >> guest: right after that we had. c-span: how was it set up in china? >> guest: it was based in moscow than. in 1920 the first emissaries were sent to make contact with chinese and the chinese communist party itself was founded in july 1921 in the ball places a girl's boarding school in the french sector of shanghai c-span: auto bond, who was he? guess who he was a communist military adviser advisor, german. his ability -- his identity was not known. he met otto brown booted only knew him by his chinese name. much much later on in the

1960s brown in east germany started to write his memoirs. he was the military adviser sent to work with the communists in the early 1930s and he tried to impose strict adherence to russian military principles which didn't work in china. he often made a little bit of a scapegoat for the chinese communist mistakes but on the other hand he was a very rigid orthodox man who was not prepared to do things the chinese way. brye till i'm jumping all over the place and there's so much to cover here and i'm not sure we are doing it the right way but here's a photograph of him. he seems to be -- >> guest: we are jumping all over the place because this is much later on.

in 1970 with mao and interpreter and the defense minister. it's an interesting story in itself. mao in 1970 relations between china and russia were terrible. there were some serious fears of a chinese russian war. mao was signaling to nixon that he wanted that her relations with the united states. one of the things he used was to invite edgar snow in american on china's national day october the tenth to stand with him and be photographed at the gate of heavenly peace. so the chinese mind that was an obvious symbolic way of telling the white house we are interested in better relations with america. kissinger comes back years afterwards.

they didn't understand the significance of it at all because it was much too elliptical. there were other mismatches of that kind but to go back to edgar snow the point of edgar snow was he was the first western journalists, the first western are really to go to the communist areas in 1936. he went to this arid desert heart of northwest china were the communist finished up the long march. edgar snow interviewed now and produced a book called red star over china. is it a six source because it had novels only account in his own words of his life after that point. he continued to go back. c-span: why did now talk to him? >> guest: various reasons. mao at that time was affirming himself as the leader of the communist party. he was not undisputedly but was

beginning to get their more adjusting them that the real reason he talked to edgar snow was the second world war was looming. the communist policy was changing. stalin wanted communist parties to work together with non-communist in order to create an alliance against fascism. the way that worked in china was the communists made overtures to the nationalist which essentially succeeded and they fought in the second world war together against the japanese but also mao was signaling the first time at edgars now the mao was interested in having better relations with antifascist western countries. it was on the context of the second world war. c-span: how much did mao travel outside? >> guest: it was very little but it might have been a slightly different if he had

because so many chinese letters -- leaders did. they went to france, germany and so on. mao didn't and the reason in a way that now was able to dominate to outdistance his rivals was precisely that he was instinctively deeply profoundly chinese. his roots and is thinking were chinese so he could respond an appeal to the chinese. he didn't go outside of china until 1950. late 1949. after winning power in beijing he went to moscow and they had a very difficult time together. the chinese soviet relationship was always very difficult and he went again in 1937 to moscow when khrushchev was in power. those were the only two foreign journeys he made. c-span: if you've followed him around all those years, how tall was he?

>> guest: i can't give you in feet. i have to say something bland. c-span: was he tall? >> guest: no that remember the chinese were less tall on average than americans or europeans. no, i guess we would need for public talking about 5 feet seven, 5 feet eight which is quite tall for a chinese. his eyes described and if you see them in photographs as very thin as a young man and he wasn't old man with quite a lot of old. joe en-lai. c-span: joe en-lai's the one on the left. >> guest: joe en-lai is the one on the left. it's a very telling photograph. mao was behind the door, very mischievous. you don't know with that in a manic expression on his face.

you don't know what that face is thinking. c-span: how old are they there? >> guest: that's 1936 i would say so mao there is 43 and joe en-lai is a little bit younger. c-span: what was their relationship then? >> guest: what their relationship was joe en-lai was a loyal servant. mao used joe, joe did not. with very rare exceptions in the beginning because he realized very early on that picture there, mao and the metal with joe en-lai on mao's right and the third figure the commander-in-chief they were the triumph earned the one power in china. c-span: could mao speak other languages?

>> guest: he tried very hard. he spent most of his life trying to learn english and he did. he could read it to some extent. he gave up on russian. you see mao's chinese he had an enormous capillary but his pronunciation was who nannies and all his life he was from that part of china. he was not gifted for an ear for languages. c-span: this picture. >> guest: this is 1949. stalin's 70th birthday. between mao and stalin is the east german leader. mao and stalin had political wills on that occasion but basically mao refusing to leave until stalin agreed to talk and

to talk seriously about the relationship with china. but for two countries supposedly communist supposedly allies it was a very edgy and called for relationship. c-span: go back to that time. back when things started to coalesce at the point when chiang kai-shek was ahead of the nationalist in china. how many people were under his control? >> guest: at that depends on when you are talking about. in the early days chiang kai-shek i wonder if padilla lost china and the answer of course is the analogy, corruption and no real vision of where he was taking the country. but he had almost everything. you know by 1930 chiang kai-shek one control of all of china except for a few very small red

spots which were communist based areas so called because this was where the communist army, armies and they were very small. there were a few thousand men, that's all would carry out sporadic attacks. then 1935 the long march, 1000 people, maybe 6000 the figures people argue over. communist leaders and troops. at the end 5000 survived. in one year, foreign army to be able to hold together and continue as a fighting force losing 95%, he talked to the pentagon, it's impossible. they did hold together. c-span: how much of that was they were killed or they died of starvation? >> guest: well a lot of it in

the early stages they had appalling disasters. the early stages of the long march mao was not in charge. one of the many times earlier when he was out of town and at that point they had some real no luck terry disasters. the middle of the long march to crucial meeting. mao reid it to the leadership as an effective leader. so they made fewer mistakes after that. they still made mistakes but they made fewer mistakes. they fought branded battles every day. the march was upon nod. it was a very difficult. c-span: where do they get their weapons? >> guest: from the nationalist. they basically captured weapons from the nationalist side to try

to wear to the national skip their weapons? >> guest: from america. initially not, initially they got them by buying them on the open market but later on they had more and more american aid. very substantial amount of american aid. c-span: where were the japanese at this point? >> guest: we are talking about the time of the long march, mid-1930s when as i say to go back chiang kai-shek had control of the whole of china and mao had tiny tiny forces. bright to there being fed by the russians a full-time? >> guest: not even any contact at that time. they had a lot of contact guests in the very early stages. they got financial aid from russia. that was how the party started going pray they didn't get

weapons from russia. there was no way the russians could send weapons. how could they physically get them there? they didn't. they didn't get money when the base areas the comments really started fighting they gotten away from russia. c-span: would china be communist today without the russians? >> guest: i'm only hesitating because of the role the russians played in starting the party. c-span: it was all their idea of? >> guest: no wasn't all their idea. there were communist groups in china already. i shouldn't have even hesitate to come the answer yes. later on the russians gave very little help all along the way. the only crucial help they gave was actually in the formation of the party. there were already communist groups that had coalesced to

form a party and i think that would have happened had the russians helped. we are talking speculatively here but no the whole point of the chinese revolution was that it was indigenous. it was not finance from our side it happened from within. you can very well ask if the japanese had not tried to occupy china would china have become communist. that i think is a much more personable proposition and mao certainly recognized it. years later when the japanese prime minister visited a shame to establish diplomatic relations he said thank you very much. you helped this poor and they did. c-span: why did the japanese invade?

>> guest: the japanese were undergoing a highly nationalistic expansion of the 1930s as you know as well as anybody else. america felt that too. they initially occupied manchuria and then they started expanding and occupying other parts of china and full-scale war between china and japan. without that were to unify the chinese behind the national cause, to give legitimacy to the communist because chiang kai-shek at the same time couldn't find it to -- fight the japanese in the communist. it became untenable for him to do so. therefore he had to make a truce with the communist. the communist venues that truce to win the chooses me -- legitimacy credibility and to vastly expand their influence under the control. after the war still chiang

kai-shek after the japanese were defeated he still had much greater resources than the communist but his regime was corrupt. he didn't use the american aid. you have got marvelous accounts by american military advisers talking about just how impossible it was in the mid-1940s to work with chiang kai-shek in the nationalist because whatever you try to do the aid was siphoned off. the men warned harper lee said. the nationalist army was a disaster. c-span: i don't know which way to go with this but how many people did mao, was he responsible for killing? or torturing her all the stories you hear over the years and his own people were killed. there are lots of different times. >> there are lots of different times and it's an interesting and quite complicated story.

more than anybody else in history, 30 million, 20 million at least, possibly 25 million. 20 or 25 million died in famine. a great leap forward, remember we were talking about it. this attempt to make china economically a great power very rapidly by mobilizing people was a disaster. it led to famine, a famine which was essentially man-made. mao made it. he didn't make it on purpose but his policies resulted in the famine in which 20 or 25 million people died so those deaths he was responsible for. then earlier on in the time that congress were taking power in china there was a campaign against landlords and land reform, 800,000 landlords were killed raid they were not killed by mao, they were killed by

dozens beating the land. i started saying to you this man compressed 70 different lives into one person. c-span: let me stop here and ask you, how did you do this? we can't cover 1/100th of the this book in this hour but how did you keep track of it all and what was your own procedure? >> guest: i did take a long time doing it and i think that helped and it's a subject that i have then fascinated with for years before her. that's really i think the best best -- i didn't have any special method but i tried very hard to follow a theme, to have

vectors which would carry you through the book to trace trends and his life which you could see as a young man, perhaps as a middle-aged man and again in later life to give the book continuity. that is actually what was difficult because atrophies are essentially chronological but to give it a coherence, when he is an actor of machiavellian duplicity but on so many different levels and in somebody different stages, that was difficult but i confess you know, absolutely and passionately i find it an essentially riveting life that the man read -- led and i tried to convey that. i think when you are totally fascinated by something he usually managed to convey your

enthusiasm and fascination. right where they live now? >> guest: in southern france. c-span: why? >> guest: i like it. c-span: how long have you lived there? >> guest: my last place was in washington. i was a washington correspondent. i taught for a year in iowa which i found very rewarding and then move to france in an old stone house, traditional stone house. why southern france? well i live though my life reporting on other countries. i would find it very difficult to live back in england now because you develop a different way of living in france. i love the food, but the language and i think the climate is marvelous in modern pim indications don't matter that much more where you live. c-span: where did you read the book? >> guest: i started writing it in tokyo.

i was based in tokyo at the time. i wrote some of it in washington and wrote quite at that event in iowa and in the last two-thirds probably in france. not so much here in the states that my publisher saying if you don't finish we are going to put a bomb under you. c-span: if they took some of your research away from you what would have been the most valuable? what chunk of research help helped you the most? >> guest: i think for me the most interesting, because it really is fairly new is the discovery of how the communist in a particular turned to violence. the early 1930s in southern yang she because you have to

explain, mao and the others were idealistic but patriotic young men who simply wanted to make the country strong and to do the best they could for it. it's a very simple phrase but they started out with the best of intentions and how do they get from that to a system which destroyed millions of people's lives, which was totally ruthless and in many ways evil. you have to make that transition and those event in the early 1930s when mao ordered a purge and we now know it was his doing. there is document that shows that he did it in which almost everybody that was tortured to death or killed was totally innocent.

it was a fabricated purge against anonymous six -- nonexistent operational and that is one of started to go badly wrong. right when the back you have a list of what you call it, tremendous personae where you list a lot of people. >> guest: because of the problems of chinese names. i think you need something to refer to. c-span: the thing that you list under a lot of names as deliberate medical -- what is that referring to? >> guest: in the cultural revolution at the end of the biographers how did they die? a lot of them died, a lot. a mao's colleagues both who decided were no longer useful and represented thinking --. they were injured in the

cultural revolution by red guards or by secret police interrogated and not given appropriate medical treatment. c-span: here you are showing how you listed a lot of these. what about the pronunciation? >> guest: what can you do? you can't translate the names. people try to translate names. because the name is a name. my name is philip short but if you are english you don't think short, oh yes seashore. it's just a name. translating is nonsense. it doesn't enhance understanding. c-span: where are you from originally? >> guest: i am british, bristol in the west. c-span: how did you get into this business are what got you into the writing business or the bbc? >> guest: and inability to do anything else constructive. when i left the university i had no idea what to do. i went to cambridge and for

friend of a friend i got a job with a magazine in south africa, a magazine for blocks -- blacks in the township. i loved it. i then became a freelancer in a little country called malawi with a very eccentric tic dating standard and i started at the time working for the bbc. had i not been expelled repeatedly from one country after another, i joined the bbc there being no alternative but to get a proper job and they sent me to moscow. and then to china. c-span: you wrote this in your book that mao was a visionary and a statesman, political military strategist of genius, philosopher and poet, and awe-inspiring charisma, fiendish

cleverness. if we missed anything? would you have liked tim? >> guest: i don't think mao was a man you liked. c-span: would you have respected him? >> guest: i certainly would have been fascinated by him. respect? it's almost too weak of a word. he was a giant figure for good or hello and anyone who reads the look will make a judgment both good and bad. right to you said he considered his accomplishing is to be victory over chiang kai-shek and the launching of a cultural revolution. how many people were murdered by these young kids? >> guest: 1 million. c-span: 1 million adults? >> guest: adults and much younger people in many cases. right to the year of the

cultural revolution? >> guest: 66 to 69. 66 and 67 were the firestorm. c-span: who led that? will was the age group? >> guest: initially very young , secondary school students and then it went to university students. university students were the main force. it became horrific. they beat each other to death and their teachers would sit on dynamite and light the fuse themselves. they did appalling things which is why it's important to recognize the chinese did appalling things to each other and to the empire and in the early parts of the century. it wasn't a sudden atypical explosion of brutality. it was one might hope a last spasm of the brutality that had an deeply implicated.

c-span: and again the purpose of that? >> guest: to ensure, to try to ensure that mao's ideas the revolutionary state which would always be revolutionary and never degenerate into capitalism he would say. those ideas were not livable. c-span: there's a picture that we have seen a lot in this country they have in the book here that mao meeting with president nixon and there's henry kissinger of are there. what kind kind of shape is the end of this mating? >> guest: he had an affect a stroke, something similar to a stroke. he was a more coptic condition than that but at this mating he had just purged his defense minister. the next picture next to him is even later when he's very weak

in 1975. that was his last mistress, mr.'s companion who was the companion of his last years. c-span: the nixon visit was of what value to mao tse-tung? >> guest: it lined up the united states as an ally of china against the soviet union. here we tend to look at it the other way round. it normalize relations with china for a strategic alliance. the alliance is too strong a word that a strategic accommodation with china against the russians which was nixon's logic. c-span: in this book your biggest personal surprise? >> guest: gosh. that's something i really haven't thought of.

c-span: either about him or that you were studying. >> guest: i think one of the things that has struck me most forcibly, you know there's a view of mao which says mao was very good in the first part of his life and then he became somewhat unhinged and detached from reality and at the end he was a monster. rubbish. it was eyes the same mao. i find that vaguely reassuring. c-span: this is the book and its bright red. close to 800 pages it's called mao, a life. our guest has been as author philip short. thank you so much.

next on booktv, barton's wayne talks about his experience as a speechwriter for former sub airline governor marc sanford. [inaudible conversations] ..

good evening thank you all for coming i want to talk for just a few minutes although you'll notice i don't use his name in the book and i will talk for just a minute about why i did that. if i was going to give this talk a title it would be how to overthink a memoir, because i didn't know how i would do it for a long time. seriously i knew that i would write something about my experience there within maybe two weeks of taking the job and that's true for a variety of reasons, it's politics and politics is a crazy business with a lot of fantasy and backstabbing