The authors interviewed 363 people, in China and elsewhere, but didn't always cite sources other historians could verify. Some of the written materials they used, too, couldn't be checked. Nathan's review led to a detailed rebuttal by the authors, to which Nathan in his turn replied.
Most other reviews were openly enthusiastic. In London's Guardian Michael Yahuda, a professor emeritus at the London School of Economics, though complaining that there was "no discussion of the quality of the sources or how they were used," still called the book "magnificent" and "stupendous." Hong Kong's last British governor Chris Patten described the book as "a bombshell," former UK Labor Party deputy-leader Roy Hattersley found Mao finally nailed as an example of pure evil, while Simon Sebag Montefiore in The Sunday Times considered the book exposed Mao as "probably the most disgusting of the bloody troika of 20th-century tyrant-messiahs."
My overriding feeling, after reading this book, was that revolutions always lead to tyrannies, whereas civilizations are the result of painstaking improvements, often simple practical ones, by innumerable individuals, accumulated over the centuries. Mao may have been the monster this book alleges, but he was also a type, the kind of person who almost inevitably acquires power in revolutions and then has his worst tendencies encouraged by the situation he finds himself in.
It's impossible to judge how "true" this near-caricature portrait of Mao is. Its value will probably be as a counter-balance to the weight of pro-Mao propaganda, portraying him as a remote sage not entirely in control of events, that in the past convinced many, Westerners included.
Mao: The Unknown Story involves few balancing acts, but it may in reality be a book aimed at influ-encing future events on the ground in China, presenting a vigorous case against the Communists at the highest possible level that can be used as ammunition when the time is ripe. Jung Chang was born in China and was even briefly a Red Guard. This book, then, looks like her attempt, together with the loyal support of her husband, to influence the future history of her native people in a more positive direction by demonstrating how pointlessly Mao crucified and tortured them and thus helping prepare the way for their eventual salvation.
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