Episode · Dwarkesh Podcast · 2025-01-30
Books mentioned on Sarah Paine — How Mao conquered China (lecture & interview)
Third and final episode in the Paine trilogy! Chinese history is full of warlords constantly challenging the capital.
Sarah Paine discussed The Political Thought of Mao Tsê-tung ; [selected and Translated By] Stuart R. Schram. Enlarged and Revised Ed by Zedong Mao and others, Red Star Over China by Edgar Snow, and The Art of War by Sun Tzu.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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The Political Thought of Mao Tsê-tung ; [selected and Translated By] Stuart R. Schram. Enlarged and Revised Ed
Discussed“This presentation is based on the first eight volumes of Stuart Schram's Collected Works of Mao. What Schram did is he compared Mao's complete works, as published in the 1950s, to whatever he could find as the earliest version of whatever it was.”
Where to get it
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Red Star Over China
Discussed“What Edgar Snow writes, Red Star Over China, you can probably go to Barnes and Noble and pick up a copy there. It's been in print ever since, and it's the original footnote in Chinese history because no one knew anything about Mao.”
Where to get it
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The Art of War
The Art of War by Sun Tzu is an ancient military treatise offering timeless strategic principles on leadership, outmaneuvering adversaries, and conflict resolution.
Discussed“He is the only translator into English of Sun Tzu who has a distinguished military career, and also, he went on to get a DPhil—it's like a PhD—from Oxford in military history. If you look at his career, he's in China during the Japanese escalation of the Sino-Japanese War.”
Where to get it
