The World Turned Upside Down A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution

<p><b>Yang Jisheng’s <i>The World Turned Upside Down</i> is the definitive history of the Cultural Revolution, in withering and heartbreaking detail.</b><br><br>As a major political event and a crucial turning point in the history of the People’s Republic of China, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) marked the zenith as well as the nadir of Mao Zedong’s ultra-leftist politics. Following <i>Tombstone</i>, his groundbreaking and award-winning history of the Great Famine, Yang Jisheng presents the only history of the Cultural Revolution by an independent scholar based in mainland China, and makes a crucial contribution to understanding the lasting influence of those years.<br><br><i>The World Turned Upside Down</i> puts every political incident, major and minor, of those ten years under extraordinary and withering scrutiny, and arrives in English at a moment when contemporary Chinese governance is leaning once more toward a highly centralized power structure and a Mao-style cult of personality.</p>