I’m reading through Frank Dikotter’s People’s Trilogy - that’ll give you an idea of what happened after the revolution. Before that, there’s a very good early biography of Mao written by an American journalist Edgar Snow called Red Star Over China.

Red Star will answer questions on why the Chinese would choose the Communists over the Nationalists.

Read Red Star first, so that you can be in the mindset of a hopeful optimist excited to see the old Fascist guard of the Nationalists be overthrown… what came after that was an enormous human tragedy.

Imagine people starving in California - you have a cornucopia of perfect land and the country still manages to accidentally or deliberately murder 100 million of its own people. Dikotter explains really well how that came to be.

Dikötter’s books are historically revisionist trash. To engage with them critically you need to read actual histories first, otherwise you will come away with wrong and unscholarly ideas - such as that Mao killed 100 million people.

@TheOubliette @doctorfail Thank you for your unique unsupported opinion of this book!

Dikötter is widely criticized by historians and sociologists. He’s only praised in mainstream lay press by people who don’t know anything about this topic. He wrote for that lay audience, not academic, because it is easier to launder his bias and dishonesty to an audience with no familiarity on this topic, which is why I said to become informed before reading him in order to avoud miseducation.

You can feel free to read those histories and criticisms, as you should always do before accepting or recommending a pop history book.