Monumental indictment of Mao as a stalinist, sociopathic killer

Review of Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday

At the start of this book, I feared that it would be 600+ pages of character assassination and a lugubrious settling of academic scores. Fortunately, about 1/3 of the way in, I found their evidence incontrovertible and the narrative so compelling that I could not put it down. Not only does it go over the basics of 20^th century Chinese history, but it un…