In Berkeley, where revolutionaries schooled in the '60s tilt against global capitalism and post-socialist state China is a growing field of academic study, radicals and scholars alike are coming to grips with a new biography that paints Chinese communist icon Mao Zedong as pure evil. In "Mao: The Unknown Story," authors Jung Chang and Jon Halliday portray Mao (1893-1976) as a cynical hedonist who rose to absolute power on Soviet strongman Josef Stalin's muscle and his willingness to crush millions of peasants in famine, war and sadistic repression. The authors, who spent a decade on the project and scoured private...
