Ten years of research have led the author of the best-selling classic Wild Swans, Jung Chang and her husband, historian Jon Halliday, to write what is considered today as the official and most comprehensive biography of Mao Tse-Tung written to date. Full of surprising revelations, this book presents a side of Mao unknown to this day ?a man who was not driven by ideology or idealism but by a secret thirst to dominate the world. The pursuit of his dream caused the death of 38 million people in the most devastating famine the world has seen. Ironically, more than 70 million people perished during the period of peace under Mao's reign.