Mao's Great Famine

Mao's Great Famine PDF Author: Frank Dikötter
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 080277928X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize An unprecedented, groundbreaking history of China's Great Famine that recasts the era of Mao Zedong and the history of the People's Republic of China. "Between 1958 and 1962, China descended into hell. Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to catch up to and overtake Britain in less than 15 years The experiment ended in the greatest catastrophe the country had ever known, destroying tens of millions of lives." So opens Frank Dikötter's riveting, magnificently detailed chronicle of an era in Chinese history much speculated about but never before fully documented because access to Communist Party archives has long been restricted to all but the most trusted historians. A new archive law has opened up thousands of central and provincial documents that "fundamentally change the way one can study the Maoist era." Dikötter makes clear, as nobody has before, that far from being the program that would lift the country among the world's superpowers and prove the power of Communism, as Mao imagined, the Great Leap Forward transformed the country in the other direction. It became the site not only of "one of the most deadly mass killings of human history,"--at least 45 million people were worked, starved, or beaten to death--but also of "the greatest demolition of real estate in human history," as up to one-third of all housing was turned into rubble). The experiment was a catastrophe for the natural world as well, as the land was savaged in the maniacal pursuit of steel and other industrial accomplishments. In a powerful mesghing of exhaustive research in Chinese archives and narrative drive, Dikötter for the first time links up what happened in the corridors of power-the vicious backstabbing and bullying tactics that took place among party leaders-with the everyday experiences of ordinary people, giving voice to the dead and disenfranchised. His magisterial account recasts the history of the People's Republic of China.

Mao's Great Famine

Mao's Great Famine PDF Author: Frank Dikötter
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 080277928X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 449

Get Book

Book Description
Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize An unprecedented, groundbreaking history of China's Great Famine that recasts the era of Mao Zedong and the history of the People's Republic of China. "Between 1958 and 1962, China descended into hell. Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to catch up to and overtake Britain in less than 15 years The experiment ended in the greatest catastrophe the country had ever known, destroying tens of millions of lives." So opens Frank Dikötter's riveting, magnificently detailed chronicle of an era in Chinese history much speculated about but never before fully documented because access to Communist Party archives has long been restricted to all but the most trusted historians. A new archive law has opened up thousands of central and provincial documents that "fundamentally change the way one can study the Maoist era." Dikötter makes clear, as nobody has before, that far from being the program that would lift the country among the world's superpowers and prove the power of Communism, as Mao imagined, the Great Leap Forward transformed the country in the other direction. It became the site not only of "one of the most deadly mass killings of human history,"--at least 45 million people were worked, starved, or beaten to death--but also of "the greatest demolition of real estate in human history," as up to one-third of all housing was turned into rubble). The experiment was a catastrophe for the natural world as well, as the land was savaged in the maniacal pursuit of steel and other industrial accomplishments. In a powerful mesghing of exhaustive research in Chinese archives and narrative drive, Dikötter for the first time links up what happened in the corridors of power-the vicious backstabbing and bullying tactics that took place among party leaders-with the everyday experiences of ordinary people, giving voice to the dead and disenfranchised. His magisterial account recasts the history of the People's Republic of China.

Eating Bitterness

Eating Bitterness PDF Author: Kimberley Ens Manning
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774859555
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
When the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949, Mao Zedong declared that "not even one person shall die of hunger." Yet some 30 million peasants died of starvation and exhaustion during the Great Leap Forward. Eating Bitterness reveals how men and women in rural and urban settings, from the provincial level to the grassroots, experienced the changes brought on by the party leaders' attempts to modernize China. This landmark volume lifts the curtain of party propaganda to expose the suffering of citizens and the deeply contested nature of state-society relations in Maoist China.

Tombstone

Tombstone PDF Author: Yang Jisheng
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374277931
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 658

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Book Description
An account of the famine that killed roughly thirty-six million Chinese during the Great Leap Forward examines how the communist ideologies and collectivization campaigns perpetuated by the country's leaders caused the catastrophe.

Hunger in Communist China

Hunger in Communist China PDF Author: Hsüeh-chia Cheng
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agriculture
Languages : en
Pages : 94

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Book Description


Hungry Ghosts

Hungry Ghosts PDF Author: C J Barker
Publisher: Book Guild Publishing
ISBN: 1835740685
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
The lives of Vic Woods and Ruth Wolfe, working-class teenagers from Liverpool and London, are profoundly disrupted by the arrival of World War II. Ruth’s journey leads her to aerial photographic interpretation, though her aspirations for advancement are denied, while Vic’s wartime experiences with bomber command haunt him long after the war is over. Their post-war marriage and tumultuous relationship with their son, James, make for a gripping narrative of trauma, conflict and, ultimately, love. Set against the backdrop of World War II and the social upheaval of the late 1960s, Hungry Ghosts transports readers into the drama of two pivotal eras in history, exploring the intergenerational impact of war, particularly on the intricate relationships between fathers and sons. Hungry Ghosts is not just a war story; it’s a timeless exploration of family bonds and the indelible scars left by war.

Hungry Ghosts

Hungry Ghosts PDF Author: Jasper Becker
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780805056686
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
Journalist Jasper Becker conducted hundreds of interviews and spent years immersed in detective work to produce this first full account of the dark chapter in Chinese history--Chairman Mao Ze-dong's secret famine of the late 1950s and early 1960s. In this horrific story of state-sponsored terror, cannibalism torture and murder, China's communist leadership boasted of record harvests and actually increased grain exports, while refusing imports and international assistance. 16-page photo insert.

The Great Famine in China, 1958-1962

The Great Famine in China, 1958-1962 PDF Author: Xun Zhou
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300175183
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Drawing on previously closed archives that have since been made inaccessible again, this volume contains the most crucial primary documents concerning the fate of the Chinese peasantry between 1957 and 1962, covering everything from cannibalism and selective killing to mass murder.

Hunger in Communist China

Hunger in Communist China PDF Author: Xuejia Zheng
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Food supply
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Communism and Hunger

Communism and Hunger PDF Author: Andrea Graziosi
Publisher: Canadian Circumpolar Institute
ISBN: 9781894865470
Category : Communism
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
Examining commonalities and specificities of massive famines produced by the two largest Communist states.

Wild Swans

Wild Swans PDF Author: Jung Chang
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439106495
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 592

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Book Description
The story of three generations in twentieth-century China that blends the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history—a bestselling classic in thirty languages with more than ten million copies sold around the world, now with a new introduction from the author. An engrossing record of Mao’s impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love, Jung Chang describes the extraordinary lives and experiences of her family members: her grandmother, a warlord’s concubine; her mother’s struggles as a young idealistic Communist; and her parents’ experience as members of the Communist elite and their ordeal during the Cultural Revolution. Chang was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen, then worked as a peasant, a “barefoot doctor,” a steelworker, and an electrician. As the story of each generation unfolds, Chang captures in gripping, moving—and ultimately uplifting—detail the cycles of violent drama visited on her own family and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history.