<BLOCKQUOTELinda Jaivin’s Bombard the Headquarters!: The Cultural Revolution in China is a concise, gripping, and accessible account of the Chinese Cultural Revolution</BLOCKQUOTE>, which Mao Zedong launched in 1966 with the slogan “Bombard the Headquarters!” This marked the unleashing of a brutal movement aimed at purging old ideas, customs, culture, and institutions deemed counter-revolutionary. The decade-long upheaval led to at least 1.7 million deaths, 4.2 million detentions, widespread social chaos, and the destruction of much of China’s cultural heritage13710.
Jaivin’s book is structured in four parts covering preconditions in the early People’s Republic, the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, the ensuing civil conflict, and reflections on its legacy. She humanizes the story by blending historical events with vivid individual anecdotes and carefully sketches key figures like Mao, the Gang of Four, Red Guards, and victims3. Her narrative makes complex politics understandable without oversimplifying, avoiding retrospective pop-psychology and instead relying on thorough research and source citations110.
The book’s importance lies in its illumination of a dark chapter that modern Chinese authorities prefer to suppress but which still profoundly shapes China today. Jaivin shows how Mao’s call to “Bombard the Headquarters” was a political strategy to attack perceived enemies within the Communist Party and society at large — notably targeting perceived “class enemies.” She also details the chaotic fanaticism of the Red Guards and how mass violence was often driven by personal vendettas and grassroots hysteria as much as top-down directives139.
Additionally, the book serves as a timely reminder of the dangers of authoritarian power, divisive leadership, and culture wars — resonating beyond China given global political current events. It offers reflections on how political turmoil and radical ideological campaigns can tear a society apart110.
For readers and researchers, Jaivin’s work stands out for its clear timelines, character lists, and recommendations for further nonfiction, fiction, and films, making it a valuable primer on the Cultural Revolution broadly regarded as "a central decade in the Maoist epoch whose catastrophic legacy endures"310.
In summary, Bombard the Headquarters! is highly regarded for delivering a tightly focused yet richly detailed narrative of the Cultural Revolution, its origins, the human toll, and continuing significance for understanding modern China and authoritarianism globally13710.