I just finished ‘Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend’ by Domenico Losurdo. I want a book exactly like that but for Mao Zedong. This quote from the book explains what I’m looking for better than I can:

“The omission of history, and especially the history of colonialism and war, is a constant in the mythology determined to transform all communist and anti-colonialist leaders into Hitler’s twin monsters.”

So I want a book that cuts through the western mythology painting Mao as a big evil dictator and puts him back into the proper historical context. I want to know how and why he did what he did.

  • Tatar_Nobility@lemmy.ml
    7·
    2 months ago

    Not what you’re looking for, but a book that definitely shares the same spirit is Silencing the Past by Michel-Rolph Trouillot, which explains how power dynamics influence the production of history by taking the Haitian revolution and its leaders as well as Colombus’ “discovery” of America as case studies.

    [T]he presences and absences embodied in sources (artifacts and bodies that turn an event into fact) or archives (facts collected, thematized, and processed as documents and monuments) are neither neutral or natural. They are created. As such, they are not mere presences and absences, but mentions or silences.