This book presents the dramatic life of Mao Zedong, revealing a wealth of unheard-of facts: why Mao joined the Communist Party, how he came to sit at the top of the Chinese Communist Party, and how he seized China step by step. Writers Jung Chang and her husband Jon Halliday took ten years to complete this book, interviewing hundreds of Mao's relatives and friends, Chinese and foreign informants and witnesses who worked and interacted with Mao as well as dignitaries from various countries.
Purchase link:https://www.amazon.com/Mao-Story-Jung-Chang/dp/0679746323.
In the 1990s, history scholar Chen Yongfa made a fundamental study of the opium economy two decades before the founding of the CCP and completed a monograph, "Poppies under the Red Sun: The Opium Trade and the Yan'an Model". Since then, more and more research articles have been written on the subject, and new information has appeared. Subsequently, the phenomenon of the opium economy of the CCP's Yan'an regime has also became an important field of study.