From what I understand this book is suppose to be the preeminent work on Mao, and took over a decade for the gathering of research alone. I've been reading, and have found it to be very enjoyable, learning a lot of things as well, like Mao's view towards communism, his involvement with opium and how much of a a role the USSR had in the CCP, the purges, and the amount of agents in the Nationalist government.

The main argument I hear against it though is that the the authors write it in a tone against Mao, and not from an unbiased perspective, which I don't think they try to hide by the wording used. But should it matter what tone they have towards him since they can back up their claims about with facts, and cited information that they provide for the reader?