Mao1999 saw the 50th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.This introduction to the life and career of Mao Zedong looks back over 50 years to show how Mao established a communist party state across mainland China in 1949 in the face of apparently insurmountable odds, and what he did as its leader in the years that followed.Shaun Breslin's lucid introduction analyses Mao from a number of angles:as revoultionary generalas founder and leader of the world's largest nation for almost 30 yearsas ideologistas astute and often brutal political manipulatorand ultimately, as victim of his own obsession with power.Shaun Breslin shows how Mao was driven by a determination to ensure that his revolutionary radicalism would outlive him, and how, ironically, his actions were so extreme that they undermined it - Maoism and Mao's China died with him in 1976.Undoubtedly the best introduction to modern Chinese history and its enigmatic protagonist.Shaun Breslin is Reader in Politics at the University of Warwick, andconvenor of the China Research programme at Chatham House. He is author of China in the 1980s: Centre-Province Relations in a Reforming Socialist State and Comparative Government and Politics: An Introduction.