i really want to teach myself about communist governments from around the world. like i have always wanted to know mao's whole story, and china today, and also about hugo chavez and other people. cos i hear alot of talk about how terrible they are/were, but i know enough not to trust that because it all comes from foggy sources, which usually means i think that because i am supposed to think that. which is dumb and lazy so i'm acting as if i know nothing about it until i actually do.
does anyone have any good ideas on where to get started, let's say on mao and china? like a good book about that whole thing?
Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China is a great book, Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing Up in the Mao Era (multiple authors), and Fanshen by William Hinton.
They're both pretty sympathetic but also have a degree of intellectual rigor that's lacking from most psycho-biographical/anticommunist propaganda accounts. The best critical account of the Cultural Revolution is Roderick Macfarquar's Mao's Last Revolution.