The Mao I wanted on the jacket of this biography was not the Mao most often seen in pictures (the smiling, avuncular leader of the people), but rather, as the authors put it, the “unknown” Mao—the young, tyrannical mass murderer in the making who is depicted in the text. As it happens, my mother and grandmother were off to mainland China, and I entrusted them with the duty of finding as much Chinese propaganda as they could carry back. This portrait was in the trove they returned with. I love Mao’s fierce and squinty gaze in this picture, which seems to fixate defiantly on both the viewer and on Mao’s own historical destiny. I removed the man from his context in the portrait and placed him in a traditional Chinese frame in order to prettify the image (isn’t this is the designer’s mandate after all—to make things pretty?). I would hope the casual onlooker would be both drawn to, and ultimately repelled by, the jacket.

Gorgeous cover for Mao Bio. Uses unexpected portrait to great effect. Beautiful design and production. Luscious spine.