A lot of it never gets into the mainstream papers, just in academic journals but I find it helpful when looking into reading a history book to check out what other historians are saying, as opposed to journalists/politicians/joe random.

Mao: The Unknown Story, for example has been critized for a lack of citations and unobjective writing.

In 2009, Gregor Benton and Lin Chun edited Was Mao Really a Monster: The Academic Response to Chang and Halliday’s "Mao: The Unknown Story", which compiles fourteen previously-published academic responses, most of which are highly critical. Benton and Lin wrote that "unlike the worldwide commercial media... most professional commentary has been disapproving." [28] Mobo Gao, Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Adelaide, wrote that The Unknown Story was "intellectually scandalous", and characterised it by saying that it "it misinterprets evidence, ignores the existing literature, and makes sensationalist claims without proper evidence."