Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
While this is a very long, detailed history. It is fascinating and went very fast. This is built on a lot of primary sources: octagenarian witnesses and released documents. I never realized how truly cruel, self-abosrbed, dicatorial, and dangerous Mao was, especially vis-à-vis trying to foment war with The United States. It is also telling how much of a loose cannon Nikita Khrushchev willing to so support Mao and enable his terroristic dreams by giving him atomic weapons technology and other military hardware.
Of course, Russia broke with China in the 50s, but Mao continued his mad accumulation of power and in doing so disseminated such agony and cruelty among the Chinese, much of it recounted here in graphic detail.
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