Mao's Last Revolution provides a detailed account of the Cultural Revolution, explaining why Mao launched it and his Machiavellian role in masterminding the movement. The book documents the chaos and terror that ensued, including power struggles among key figures like Lin Biao, Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Qing. It also explores the aftermath, where Deng Xiaoping led China into a reform era following Mao's death.
Joseph Torigian's book challenges traditional narratives of succession in authoritarian regimes, highlighting the roles of personal prestige, manipulation, and coercion in determining power outcomes. Through case studies of the Soviet Union after Stalin and China after Mao, Torigian argues that these factors were more decisive than policy differences or institutional processes.
This book by Yang Jisheng provides a meticulous and humane account of the Great Chinese Famine that occurred from 1958 to 1962. It details the catastrophic consequences of Mao Zedong's 'Great Leap Forward' policy, which led to widespread starvation, economic collapse, and political terror. The book analyzes the institutional and ideological factors that contributed to the famine, including the totalitarian control of the state, the concentration of power, and the propaganda mechanisms that silenced dissent. Yang Jisheng's work is based on extensive research using Chinese government sources and personal accounts, making it a powerful and important historical document.
This book by Frank Dikötter provides an unprecedented account of China's Great Famine, which resulted from Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward. The Great Leap Forward was an attempt to rapidly industrialize and modernize China, but it ended in one of the deadliest mass killings in human history, with estimates suggesting between 30 to 45 million deaths. Dikötter's research, based on newly opened Communist Party archives, reveals the direct responsibility of top Chinese government officials, including Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, for the famine. The book details the devastating impact on rural areas, the forced collectivization, and the extreme violence and starvation that ensued. It also challenges the myth that the central leadership was unaware of the famine, showing instead that they made deliberate choices that exacerbated the crisis.
This book by Kevin Rudd delves into Xi Jinping's ideological framework, characterized as 'Marxist-Leninist nationalism.' Rudd argues that Xi has shifted Chinese politics to the Leninist left, economics to the Marxist left, and foreign policy to the nationalist right. The book examines Xi's speeches, articles, and primary documents to understand his worldview, which integrates Marxist and nationalist elements. It highlights how Xi's ideology drives Chinese policy and behavior, both domestically and internationally, and discusses the implications of these changes for global politics and policy makers[2][4][5].
In 'Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology', Neil Postman argues that modern society has transitioned into a 'technopoly', where technology is not just a tool but the central organizing principle of culture. Postman contends that this shift has radical consequences for politics, art, education, intelligence, and truth. He describes how technology has become the primary source of moral authority, leading to a culture that values efficiency and technical calculation over human judgment. The book critiques the pervasive influence of technology on all aspects of life, highlighting issues such as the reduction of truth to data, the dominance of experts in all fields, and the erosion of traditional moral and cultural frameworks[2][4][5].
Often I will find in a chronology or a biography, you know, official materials, evidence that because I have other evidence, it’s meaningful in a way that maybe the people who edited those collections might not have expected.
That’s the idea of mosaic theory – you bring together many pieces of evidence, even small ones, to bring the full meaning out.
— Joseph Torigian, NBN interview May 2025
In his new book, The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping (Stanford University Press, 2025), Joseph Torigian leads readers deep into the complex work of historical reconstruction – a process he metaphorically describes as mosaic theory. Studying elite politics in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Torigian explains, isn’t about uncovering one decisive document; it’s about piecing together partial, often contradictory fragments like the Li Rui diaries, edited speeches, and scattered archival traces into a fuller, richer picture.
Torigian’s approach builds on foundational insights from political scientists like Paul Pierson and China historians Frederick Teiwes and Warren Sun, whose empirical rigor has long shaped the field of CCP elite politics. Following this tradition, Torigian resists simple or deterministic narratives, showing that even dramatic moments like the Tiananmen protests must be understood as products of internal fractures, improvisation, and deep uncertainty – not as inevitable climaxes.
In this interview, Torigian discusses how his course “The Revisionists” invites students to wrestle with the ethical tension between judging and understanding. His own scholarship, he explains, aims to provide the tools, context, and historical reconstruction that allow readers to form their own moral judgments – without handing them a prefabricated verdict.
Ultimately, Torigian’s book and his public reflections invite us to step back from binaries of hero and villain, reformer and hardliner, or loyalist and dissenter, and to see history as a web of improvisation, contradiction, and meaning. He suggests that the historian’s role is not to dictate the final moral judgment, but to parse the evidence by piecing together and coloring a mosaic that illuminates the pressures and choices that shaped the past – leaving the moral reckoning, and the hard questions, to the rest of us.
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