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: Jiěfàngjūn 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 and emergence in China, as well as its global footprint and legacy.

The first part of the book focuses on Mao's Quotations in China. Daniel Leese's chapter examines the production, dissemination, and ultimately the demise of the Little Red Book, placing it within the practice of (y lù) in China (pp. 24–25). Andrew Jones and Guobin Yang, meanwhile, analyze the synthesis between Quotations and forms of multimedia such as music, and the political violence initiated by Quotations (and factionalism) during the Cultural Revolution years, respectively. Lanjun Xu's chapter stands out in this section with a highly engaging exposé of the translation and mass export of Mao's Little Red Book from China to the world. Her essay, which blends oral-history interviews with memoirs and archival research, concludes that the Little Red Book's success “relied on the global distribution network and translation mode that the new China had been developing since its establishment […] whereas in the 1950s China tried to keep a balance between political and non-political materials, in the 1960s the dissemination of Mao's works played a dominant role” (pp. 93–94). As a result of the primacy that the Chinese Communist Party placed on systematic translation, the Party was able to “export Chinese revolution to the world”, and traverse the significant gulf that it believed separated the Three Worlds of capitalism, socialism, and development (p. 77).

The second part of the book places specific case studies in which Maoism took root in radical thought streams under the lens of analysis of global connections. Priya Lal's chapter examines the relationship between Maoist China and Julius Nyerere's ujamaa villagization project, which Lal asserts had strong Maoist underpinnings and overtones. Elidor Mëhilli then details the complex relationship between Enver Hoxha's Albania and the Maoism of the Cultural Revolution. In both chapters, it is clear that, despite uneasiness over the directions the respective countries moved towards by adopting parts instead of the whole of Maoism, geopolitical decisions trumped ideological affinity or adherence. Chapters by Sreemati Chakrabarti and David Scott Palmer analyze the emergence of Maoist insurgencies in the Naxalite and Shining Path movements of India and Peru, respectively, while Julian Bourg and Bill Mullen explore Maoism in counter-cultural movements in France and the United States. Mullen's analysis, in particular, shows how Maoism “entered the ideological current of the US left […] as a tool for building a Third World anti-imperialist internationalism created by African American and Asian American activists who saw in the Little Red Book a syncretic device for conceptualizing and advancing their own national self-determination struggles” (p. 246). Quinn Slobodian, Dominique Reill, and Elizabeth McGuire focus on the uneasiness that Maoism caused in Europe and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, while Ban Wang's concluding essay highlights the central role that Quotations played in the concept of people's democracy in China.

The book is ambitious in scope, and satisfies as a much needed study of Maoism as a global force. Indeed, Cook's highly engaging exegesis of Lin Biao's “spiritual atom bomb” metaphor sets the tone for the first three contributions which offer very strong analyses of the impact of Quotations in China. The contributions on the Little Red Book's appropriations outside China are unquestionably pioneering too, but some issues stand out in the specific case studies, most notably the chapters on Peru and Tanzania. Palmer and Lal gloss over, or skip entirely, extant ideologies, electing instead to supplant them conveniently with Maoism as the sole progenitor thought that underpinned their case studies.

Palmer only mentions seminal Peruvian Marxist theorist José Carlos Mariátegui in passing instead of placing emphasis on his concept of indigenismo at the forefront of inspiring “Gonzalo Thought”, as the body of writings and ideas of Abimael Guzman was called (though the term receives scant explanation in Palmer's account). He also neglects to mention that, later in the 1990s, the Peruvian state under Alberto Fujimori made concerted efforts to eradicate the “ethnic question”, and sought actively to turn its indigenous population into peasants, thereby leaving few options for indigenous Peruvians to improve their standing. Palmer then claims that the Shining Path's ideology “proved to be much less convincing to Peru's indigenous peasantry”, and that its leader, Abimael Guzman, pursued ideological purity “from beginning to end” (p.131).

This position relies heavily on Truth and Reconciliation Commission tropes that focus almost exclusively on Shining Path's later period, during which it radicalized and engaged in excessive violence and drug trafficking. Absent from Palmer's analysis, however, is an effort to discuss Shining Path's earlier policies of indigenous outreach. The Party's homages to the Inkarri myth, meanwhile, suggests that it sought adaptation instead of ideological purity, and Shining Path's shift of the anti-government campaign to Peru's capital and largest urban center in Lima alienated much of the Party leadership and broke with Maoist principles. Indeed, its movement failed as a peasant-based insurgency since the strategic equilibrium that it sought in the countryside was not achieved, the insurgency's membership comprised largely of intellectuals, leftist activists, and disillusioned Peruvian youths, and it reproduced rather than eliminated outright the socio-economic cleavages that were present in Peruvian society.

Lal, meanwhile, argues that in Tanzania, Julius Nyerere's ujamaa “sought to recuperate a lost ideal of traditional African socialism” – a term Lal neither defines nor problematizes – but ultimately, “the influence of Chinese socialism on the political imaginary of ujamaa proved singularly unmistakable”, drawing upon Maoist concepts of self-reliance and “peasant primacy” (pp. 96, 113). In reality, however, Nyerere regarded ujamaa as a program centered on development efforts on an indigenous base instead of on thought streams from without, and his non-aligned status and Fabian socialist and Catholic social teachings superseded any serious commitment to a radical dogma. To my surprise, Lal does not engage with Marxist scholars such as Issa Shivji, P.L. Raikes, or Goran Hyden, who have criticized ujamaa for its entrenchment rather than eradication of class divides. Instead of redistributing nationalized property to the impoverished, nationalized ujamaa property remained in the firm control of the vibwanyenye (Swahili for bourgeoisie), and long-standing fears of losing status dominance in Tanzania led them to distrust and mistreat peasants. By contrast, the critique by Zanzibari revolutionary Abdul Rahman Babu of Nyerere's African socialism, which challenged the idea of harmonious past equality in Africa and presented material progress and Maoist “voluntariness” and self-reliance as correctives, highlights the ways in which Maoism could have reversed Tanzania's negative social frictions.

These criticisms notwithstanding, Mao's Little Red Book: A Global History is a pioneering study of the emergence of global Maoism, and it is essential reading for anyone who is interested in contemporary world history. The edition is a long overdue contribution to the literature on Maoism, and stands as an ambitious collection of thoughtful and engaging essays that remind us of Mao's impact throughout the world and the lasting impact of his thought to this very day.