The World Turned Upside Down

Yang Jisheng’s book, *The World Turned Upside Down*, is the definitive history of the Cultural Revolution, with its devastating and harrowing details.

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) was a momentous political event and a pivotal turning point in the history of the People’s Republic of China, representing both the zenith and the decline of Mao Zedong’s radical left-wing policies. Partly in response to Soviet “revisionism,” which he perceived as a threat to the future of socialism, Mao mobilized the masses in a battle against what he called the “bourgeois” forces within the Chinese Communist Party. This widespread class struggle, which lasted a decade, wreaked havoc on traditional Chinese culture and the national economy.

Following his groundbreaking and award-winning book on the history of the Great Famine, “The Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962,” Yang Jiseng presents here the only history of the Cultural Revolution written by an independent scholar based in mainland China, making a crucial contribution to understanding the impact of those years today.