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Selected Works and other official Mao texts/images are available at the Mao Zedong Internet Archive: http://eprints.cddc.vt.edu/marxists/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/index.htm.

Zedong, MaoMao's Road to Power, 1912–1949, ed. by Schram, Stuart R. (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1992--), [Standard scholarly edition in 10 volumes, up through 1941 published by 2010.]Google Scholar

Zedong, MaoMao Tse-tung Unrehearsed, ed. by Schram, Stuart R. (New York: Penguin Books, 1974).Google Scholar

Zedong, MaoThe Writings of Mao Zedong, 1949–1976, ed. by Kao, Ying-mao and Leung, John, 2 vols. (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1986, 1992). [Only covers 1949–58.]Google Scholar

Zedong, MaoThe Secret Speeches of Chairman Mao: From the Hundred Flowers to the Great Leap Forward, ed. by MacFarquhar, Roderick, Cheek, Timothy, and Wu, Eugene (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1989). [Translations of unofficial Mao texts from 1957–58 and commentary by U.S. scholars.]Google Scholar

Cheek, Timothy. Mao Zedong and China's Revolutions: A Brief History with Documents (Boston: Bedford Books, 2002). [Selected texts with historical background.]CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Saich, Tony. The Rise to Power of the Chinese Communist Party: Documents and Analysis (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996). [Reliable documents and helpful commentary.]Google Scholar

Stephan Landsberger's Chinese Propaganda Posters: www.iisg.nl/~landsberger/. [An excellent Web site including posters and commentary on Mao, Mao's Thought, etc.]

Spence, Jonathan. Mao. Penguin Lives Series (New York: Penguin, 1999). [A short, elegantly written life.]Google Scholar

Davin, Delia. Mao Zedong (London: History Press, 2009). [Brief, reliable, and readable.]Google Scholar

Short, Philip. Mao: A Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1999). [Colorful, longer, and more detailed.]Google Scholar

Terrill, Ross. Mao: A Biography (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000). [Similarly longer and colorful; Chinese edition of this biography has sold well in the PRC.]Google Scholar

Chang, Jung, and Halliday, Jon. Mao: The Unknown Story (London: Jonathan Cape, 2005). [Notoriously negative biography by well-known writing couple; not accepted as reliable by most scholars; see Benton and Lin below and Andrew Nathan in LRB: www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n22/nath01_.html.]Google Scholar

Meisner, Maurice. Mao Zedong: A Political and Intellectual Portrait (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2007). [A reasoned and regretful Marxist analysis of Mao's thought and work.]Google Scholar

Fairbank, John King, and Goldman, Merle. China: A New History, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).Google Scholar

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Spence, Jonathan. In Search of Modern China (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999).Google Scholar

Dirlik, Arif. Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).Google Scholar

Womack, , Brantly, . The Foundations of Mao's Political Thought (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1982).Google Scholar

Teiwes, Frederick C.Politics & Purges in China: Rectification and the Decline of Party Norms, 2nd ed. (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1993). (A detailed and insightful account of the style of politics that emerged under Mao in the 1940s and has dominated China ever since.]Google Scholar

Apter, David, and Saich, Tony. Revolutionary Discourse in Mao's Republic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994).Google Scholar

Chen, Jian. Mao's China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). [Uses newly released materials to create a fresh interpretation of Mao's role in the Korean War and cold war more broadly.]Google Scholar

MacFarquhar, Roderick. Origins of the Cultural Revolution, Vols. 1–3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974, 1983, 1997). [The authoritative history of the politics that led to China's tragic political convulsion.]Google Scholar

MacFarquhar, Roderick, and Schoenhals, Michael. Mao's Last Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). [High politics and individual experience in the Cultural Revolution.]Google Scholar

Gao, Wenqian. Zhou Enlai: The Last Perfect Revolutionary (New York: Public Affairs, 2008). [An English edition of the reflections of a PRC scholar now in the West.]Google Scholar

Liu, Binyan. Two Kinds of Truth: Stories and Reportage from China (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006). [A welcome reprint of the 1990 collection, People or Monsters? featuring the writings by one China's most notable critical party intellectuals.]Google Scholar

Wakeman, Frederic. History and Will: Philosophical Perspectives on Mao Tse-tung's Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973). [One of the most wide-ranging engagements with Mao's thought, from Hegel to Stalin by way of Confucius.]Google Scholar

Zhong, Xueping, Zheng, Wang, and Bai, Di, eds., Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing Up in the Mao Era (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001).

Gilmartin, Christine, Hershatter, Gail, Rofel, Lisa, and White, Tyrene, eds. Engendering China: Women, Culture and the State (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Contemporary China Series, Harvard University Press, 1994). [Still a useful collection on gender issues in Mao's China and after.]

Morning Sun (Boston: Longbow Group, 2002). [An excellent 2-hour documentary focusing on the Cultural Revolution and Mao; available on DVD and supported by an intelligent Web site: www.morningsun.org/]

Schrift, Melissa. Biography of a Chairman Mao Badge: The Creation and Mass Consumption of a Personality Cult (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001).Google Scholar

Barmé, Geremie R.Shades of Mao: The Posthumous Cult of the Great Leader (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996). [A marvelous selection of translations and commentary.]Google Scholar

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