IRL7

http://books.google.com/books?id=4y6mACbLWGsC&pg=PA631&dq=mao+a+life+all+the+dead+of+the+second+world+war&ei=V8N5SaWvCIuYMrK0-KwL#v=onepage&q=&f=false
This is a book, Mao: A Life, by Philip Short. I'm only referencing pages 39-439 which discuss his rise to power. Philip Short is a British author and journalist, he wrote this biography about Mao and presented a TV documentary on Mao called "Mao's Bloody Revolution Revealed" on the UK Terrestrial station Five. I think it's interesting to look at a detailed source like a biography, it's so different from reading a textbook, there's something about the style that affects the way I read it. I think it enhances the learning process to read these kinds of sources, like when they include the text citations and examples of documents in the history books, it's more attention grabbing for me. By using this source I definitely face the limitations of the author's prejudice, displayed plainly in the title of his TV documentary, it seems evident that he was at least slightly anti-Mao, but obviously he feels passionately about the subject if he wrote this book. It's hard to judge the extent to which the authors own opinions are embedded in the book.