Almost 30 years after his death, Mao remains the sacred symbol that China dare not touch. His massive portrait still looms above the entrance to the Forbidden City. His face is on every banknote in the country. Yet while he continues to be worshipped in China, a shocking new book has concluded that Mao was the bloodiest mass murderer in history, a sadistic thug who enjoyed torture and was willing to sacrifice half of China's population for his dream of global domination. The biography, based on 10 years of archival research and interviews with people in Mao's inner circle, is a stunning challenge to China's conventional view of the Communist leader.

Read more...