The thoughts of Mao Zedong, published in 1964 under the title Quotations, are considered the blueprint for Chinese communism and a guidebook to the Cultural Revolution. The collected soundbites from his speeches and writings have become known the world over as the Little Red Book.
But the red-covered Quotations of the former Chinese Communist Party chairman, who died in 1976, aged 82, went through many ideological iterations before the official version was settled on. The original cover was also a different colour – in fact, had some of those earlier thought experiments been declared the final draft, we could now be talking about Chairman Mao’s Little Blue Book.
