The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945–1957 is a book by University of Hong Kong historian Frank Dikötter. It is the second book in a trilogy about the history of China under Mao Zedong, based primarily on newly opened government archives, as well as on interviews and memoirs. Dikötter's first book in the series, Mao's Great Famine, covered the period of the Great Leap Forward, whereas The Tragedy of Liberation examines the establishment and first decade of the People's Republic of China. In the book, Dikötter challenges the view that the early years of the People's Republic of China were constructive and relatively benign, at least as compared with the destruction of the preceding Chinese Civil War, or the subsequent Great Leap Forward; instead, he describes it as an era of "calculated terror and systematic violence", characterised by indoctrination, ill-conceived economic policies that stunted growth, the uprooting of traditional social relations, and officially mandated "death quotas" that contributed to the unnatural deaths of 5 million people within the first decade of the establishment of the republic. Source: Wikipedia (en)