The Messiah and the Mandarins : The Paradox of Mao's China

xvi, 332pp. Indexed. Red cloth-covered boards with gilt titles to spine (corners very slightly rounded). Internally neat, clean, bright and tight barring a couple of light fingering marks. In its original, illustrated, dust jacket (very slightly rubbed on corners and spine tips). This is not a history of China or a biography of Mao, although it may serve as both; rather it is a tragi-comedy of Chinese manners in which the same characteristics which enable Mao to 'liberate' China then plunged the country into a series of economic and cultural disasters.