Reddit reviews Mao: The Real Story

The Red Book is pure propaganda and just a collection of his sayings. Not really worth reading.

I'd recommend this biography as it goes into detail about how Mao's study of Western (and particularly German) political philosophy led him to despise Confucianism and traditional Chinese culture and how he thought it had held China back. It was a view held in common by many intellectuals at the time, and was one of the key themes of the May the 4th student movement in 1919.

The long comeback:

So I've looked into Jung Changs "Mao: The Unknown Story," and its a hit-piece. Much of it has not or can not be verified by anyone besides Jung Chang since most of the book is based on interviews with Chinese people... who were hostile to Mao from the beginning. Much of it has been contradicted the Soviet's records, and has been discredited by Sinologists generally. A much better biography is Mao: The Unknow Story. From what I read Pantsov's biography is neither a hit piece nor apologetics and it uses a ton of Russian/USSR archival information that is still restricted to the general public. I'm going to start reading that.

Thanks! The Amazon review points me towards this other biography - do you know anything about it?