Also, just thought I had better say I have finally finished reading the epic that was Mao, The Unknown Story after 10 months of reading! I really enjoyed it but found it very hard-going and uncomfortable reading at times! Still Mao's was a compelling story and some of the historical facts revealed in this definitive biography left me shocked and breathless with their sheer brutality and inhumanity. Over 70 million ppl died during Mao's reign of fear and many of them in peacetime in his futile struggles to make China a Super-power to be reckoned with alongside America and Russia! When his own people were dying of famine and starvation, Mao was giving millions of U.S dollars worth of aid to other countries to curry technological favours and armaments. His obsession with developing and being able to launch a nucleur bomb blinded him to the fate of those around him and, reading this, one is given the true defenition of meglomania! At one point, Mao is quoted as saying that if there was a nucleur war then the worst that could happen would be that millions would die and Communism could take over! People like this in power are just plain scary and it makes you wonder just what else is happening across the globe now that we don't know about! Somewhere out there, somewhere, right now is there sure to be another man like Mao or Hitler or Stalin dreaming dreams of world supremacy ~ not like the bad guys do in the movies but at the expense of hundreds of millions of innocent lives? It is a scary and very sobering thought and there is so much that goes on in this world of ours that we either don't know about or just turn a blind eye to!
And that is why books like this are important!
Because by examining the mistakes made by men such as this in the past, maybe just maybe there is hope for all of our futures.....
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