"Anyone who hopes to understand the CCP and PLA's strategic mindset must include Mao's Finest Hour on their bookshelf. This meticulously researched book is less a battlefield history than a study of institutional psychology: how one's greatest military triumph echoes through time to influence modern concepts of warfighting. Toshi Yoshihara's finely crafted book helps us understand how the residue of former glory deeply imprints preferences on a nation's strategic psyche, illuminating cherished principles and stratagems that may foreshadow how China will fight today or tomorrow. Mao's Finest Hour is a timely tour de force with direct application to potential contingencies in the Western Pacific—a must read." —Rear Admiral Mike Studeman, United States Navy (ret.), former Commander of the Office of Naval Intelligence, and author of Might of the Chain: Forging Leaders of Iron Integrity
"In Mao’s Finest Hour Toshi Yoshihara has brilliantly demonstrated the crux of Mao Zedong’s thinking on maneuver warfare, captured how Mao’s strategies were employed in the campaigns of the Chinese Civil War, and shown how Mao’s thinking influences war planning and exercises in the modern People’s Liberation Army. This book is a must read for military theorists and historians." —Larry M. Wortzel, former commissioner on the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission and Senior Fellow, American Foreign Policy Council
"How does the historical legacy of a military organization take shape? What effect does that legacy have on the planning and conduct of subsequent conflicts? Toshi Yoshihara explores these questions through the history of the great campaigns of the final year of the Chinese Civil War—the People’s Liberation Army’s “finest hour.” Maintaining a skillful balance between strategic, operational, and tactical issues, Yoshihara describes how PLA field commanders and their soldiers translated Mao’s theory of war into victory on the battlefield. He then shows how the legacy of this “finest hour” informed China’s wars in Korea and Vietnam. The book concludes with an insightful analysis of the nature and degree to which that legacy remains relevant to the PLA in the 21st century. Yoshihara makes his case in concise, highly readable prose. Anyone with an interest in the past, present and future of the PLA or in Chinese military history will benefit—as I have—from reading this book." —Harold M. Tanner, Professor of History, University of North Texas and author of Where Chiang Kai-shek Lost China: The Liao-Shen Campaign, 1948
"How can we better understand, anticipate and defeat the People’s Republic of China? In a meticulously researched work, Toshi Yoshihara argues that militaries have critical periods that shape them for decades after. For the PLA, its “Finest Hour,” occurred during the culminating years of the Chinese Civil War. This was their D-Day, their Midway, Tarawa, and Big Week, the victories that taught them how to win in the future. The PRC built massive conventional forces, weakened the enemy from within, and then used maneuver to achieve overwhelming superiority, not only to defeat the enemy, but to annihilate him, not to hurt his fingers, but to chop them off. American decision-makers should read this essential book and learn what Yoshihara has to teach us." —Stephen Peter Rosen, Beton Michael Kaneb Professor Emeritus of National Security and Military Affairs, Harvard University
