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Mao's Little Red Book. A Global History . Ed. by Cook Alexander C. . Cambridge University Press , Cambridge [etc.] 2014 xvi, 287 pp. Ill. £50.00; $80.00. (Paper: £17.99; $27.99.)
Few pieces of literature have both the ubiquity and longevity of Chairman Mao Zedong's Quotations of Chairman Mao (, pinyin: Máo zh xí y lù), or more famously, the Little Red Book. While initially designed by the People's Liberation Army Daily (; pinyin: Jiefàngjun Bào) to inspire PLA soldiers in service, Mao's Quotations evolved far beyond its diminutive form to become a medium through which the Chinese revolution could spread outside of China's borders. A selection of his most resonant quotes and precepts, it has been translated into more than sixty languages, and has influenced radically-minded intellectuals and workers in locales ranging from Phnom Penh to Dar es Salaam, Manila to Lima, and Delhi to Paris. Yet despite its global spread, scholars have thus far neglected to shed significant light on the Little Red Book as a vehicle for the global spread of Maoism. It is for this reason that Mao's Little Red Book: A Global History, which is edited by Alexander C. Cook, Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley, is such a welcome addition to the field of twentieth-century world history, and to the study of ideas across cultures.
As Cook states early on, this book represents "the first scholarly effort to understand Quotations from Chairman Mao as a global historical phenomenon" (p. xiv). The fifteen essays that comprise the volume, all of which originate from a 2011 University of California, Berkeley conference, place overdue attention on the Little Red Book's origins, domestic spread, and emergence in radical movements far removed from China's purview. Cook's introductory chapter discusses Lin Biao's foreword to the Little Red Book - more specifically his "spiritual atom bomb" metaphor - and asks whether the Little Red Book stands as an "appropriation of radicalism by the commodity form or the appropriation of the commodity form by radicalism", concluding ultimately that it represents a well-traveled, accessible, and "dynamic script for revolution" (p. 19). Subsequent chapters attempt to answer Cook's question by discussing the Little Red Book's formation...