MAO: THE UNKNOWN STORY by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday (Jonathan Cape, £25): THERE is no question about it - Mao Tse-Tung was an evil man.

Just how wicked has been reinforced by a compelling new biography, which sheds light on dark corners hitherto unseen.

The book is by Jung Chang - universally known for her award-winning Wild Swans. Written with the help of her husband, the historian Jon Halliday, it sets about demolishing any remaining myths about the despot.

Mao, who was to be responsible for 70 million deaths, had unlikely beginnings as a provincial school teacher. An inveterate reader, he was influenced early on by the minor German philosopher Frederik Paulsen, who shunned all constraints of responsibility and duty.

His rise to the top of the Chinese Communist Party took 28 years. After the first peasant revolt in 1927, he soon found a love for bloodthirsty thuggery and firmly established the principle of public executions to instil fear.

One of the greatest myths he fostered was that of the Long March.

In fact, Mao did not organise the march and was nearly left behind by colleagues who could not abide him and tried to oust him several times.

Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek had actually eased their passage as part of a secret horse-trade for his son and heir, who was held hostage by Stalin, and throughout the march Mao did not put one foot in front of the other, being carried the entire way in a sedan chair.

On the way, he despatched his rivals with ruthless efficiency, sending one opponent's column to certain doom at hands of the Nationalists and then burying alive the remnants after duping them into digging their own graves.

Just how utterly devoid of human feeling Mao was is illustrated in the way he ordered his newborn baby to be abandoned to die during the march.

Once he consolidated his power, Mao fended off repeated threats through scheming murder and poison. The events of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution are comprehensively covered. What makes this book special is the vivid sense of immediacy it imparts - bolstered by revelations from previously unseen archives and accounts from eyewitnesses who have been doggedly tracked down over ten years. The fruits of a mammoth undertaking, this book is required reading.

Gavin Engelbrecht

ROGUE REGIME by Jasper Becker (Oxford University Press, £16.99)

THE world's ultimate bogeyman must be somebody with supreme power, a genuine nuclear capability and a mind that is divorced from reality. Kim Jongil, the leader of North Korea fits the bill on all those counts and more and the problem of how to deal with him has been a nightmare for both his fellow Koreans in the South and the American Government. After all, how do you put pressure on a mad dictator prepared to let three million citizens starve to death?

Jasper Becker puts the present situation into its historical context and analyses the motives and strategy of the countries involved, and shows just how delicate diplomacy has to be in such a delicate situation.

BASIL HUME: The Monk Cardinal by Anthony Howard (Headline, £20)

THE Times obituary following Cardinal Hume's death in 1999 included the observation that he was one of the most deeply loved of Catholic prelates and this is particularly true in the North-East, where he was well known as a Newcastle United supporter.

But just how did he put a new and acceptable face on the Roman Catholic Church in Britain? Mainly, as Howard points out, because he was a great conciliator reassuring the traditionalists within the church while encouraging the progressives, while in the outside world the Newcastle-born cleric earned Brownie points and publicity forchampioning the causes of the Magire Seven and the Guildford Four. Although not a charismatic figure in the style of the late Pope, he was indeed a figure of stature and his loss is still keenly felt.

Steve Craggs

MOONDUST: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth by Andrew Smith (Bloomsbury, £17.99)

OF the 12 men to have walked on the moon, nine remain alive. With their time on earth fast running out, journalist Andrew Smith makes it his mission to track them down to capture the essence of their experiences and how it affected them individually.

The resulting book is an enjoyable account of sleuthing and persistence as he pins down the former astronauts for a series of fascinating interviews.

Among those the reader meets are Neil Armstrong who remains, as fellow astronaut Mike Collins observes, a man who "never transmits anything beyond his first layer". So obsessed is this recluse that he insists that anyone encountering him first signs an "Armstrong Clause" preventing the reporting of what he says.

Then there is the eccentric Buzz Aldrin, who still smarts from the fact that he was only the second man to walk on the moon. Collins observes: "He resents more not being the first man on the moon than he appreciates being the second". Aldrin even refused to take snaps of Armstrong on the moon, saying he was too busy.

Among the other moonwalkers are Edgar Mitchell, who founded a space religion, Noetics, after his experience and David Scott, who disgraced himself by smuggling stamped letters to the moon to later sell.

Many of those who walked on the moon said they were so busy collecting rocks that they did not have time to savour their surroundings. To this day Al Bean, who has become an artist, relentlessly conveys the lunar landscape on canvas, using his moon boots and hammer to add texture; he even found moondust in his spacesuit to include in some works.

Some of the author's interviews are superficial, others insightful, while the book is laced with an infectious enthusiasm for the subject. Smith can consider this book a mission accomplished.

Gavin Engelbrecht

Published: 21/06/2005