本集基本上是沿用了《诗词选》五十首诗词和注释。《诗词选》是个简注本，这符合毛泽东生前主张只出简注本的意愿。《诗词选》的注释工作是在胡乔木指导下进行的，不少注释是他亲自撰写和改定的。在《诗词选》出版后，陆续发现一些需要订正的问题，读者也提出一些意见。……

毛泽东的一生，任用过许多秘书。本书《毛泽东的秘书们》，从秘书的角度写毛泽东，是回忆、研究毛泽东的特殊视角。本书写了毛泽东的六位秘书，即秘书胡乔木、陈伯达、田家英、江青、机要秘书高智和罗光禄。作者曾直接采访了陈伯达、高智、罗光禄，并采访了胡乔木夫人谷羽、田家英夫人董边以及众多的江青知情人，获得大量第一手资料。此外，书中并附录作者对中央警卫团团长张耀祠、给毛泽东讲诗文的芦荻的采访实录，同样对于了解、研究毛泽东具有重要的参考价值。

The sixth book in the bestselling Penguin Lives -- Penguin Lives pairs celebrated writers with famous Great writers on great figures individuals who have shaped our thinking. The complex persona of Chairman Mao--remembered with hate, awe, and even reverence--calls for what the Boston Globe has termed "[Jonathan] Spence's engaging blend of history, literature, and biography." Drawing from his expertise in Chinese politics and culture, Spence penetrates Mao's rhetoric and infamous self-will to distill an intimate portrait of a man as withdrawn and mysterious as the emperors he disdained. Spence superbly illuminates Mao, a leader who, at a watershed moment in history, turned the classic Chinese concept of reform through reversal into an endless adventure in upheaval. Mao examines a chilling enigma for historians, students of human nature, and Americans fascinated more than ever by China. Praise for Penguin Lives: "Both entertaining and literary" --The New Yorker "They bear testimony to the fact that bio-graphical narratives can aspire to art rather than to history." --The New York Times Book Review

本书节译自著者的《毛泽东传记》的后半部分，书中记述了毛泽东自1949年建立新中国至1976年去世这27年之中，在政治、经济、军事、外交、文化等领域的重要活动，涉及当代中国历史一系列重大事件。