Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62 Kindle Download + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62 Kindle Download

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 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.Access to Communist Party archives has long been denied to all but the most loyal historians, but now a new law has opened up thousands of central and provincial documents that fundamentally change the way one can study the Maoist era. Frank Dikötter's astonishing, riveting and magnificently detailed book chronicles an era in Chinese history much speculated about but never before fully documented.Dikötter shows that instead of lifting the country among the world's superpowers and proving the power of communism, as Mao imagined, in reality the Great Leap Forward was a giant - and disastrous - step in the opposite direction. He demonstrates, as nobody has before, that under this initiative the country 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 the greatest demolition of real estate - and catastrophe for the natural environment - in human history, as up to a third of all housing was turned to rubble and the land savaged in the maniacal pursuit of steel and other industrial accomplishments. Piecing together both the vicious machinations in the corridors of power and the everyday experiences of ordinary people, Dikötter at last gives voice to the dead and disenfranchised.Exhaustively researched and brilliantly written, this magisterial, groundbreaking account definitively recasts the history of the People's Republic of China.Read More

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  • TheBookPeople

    Revolution is not a dinner party. (Mao Zedong). 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 Dikotter's astonishing, 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. Dikotter 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 not only one of the most deadly mass killings of human history, but the greatest demolition of real estate in human history, (between 30 per cent and 40 per cent of all housing was turned into rubble), and a catastrophe for the natural world as well, as the land was savaged in the maniacal pursuit of steel and other industrial accomplishments. Dikotter's extraordinary research in Chinese archives 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.

  • Blackwell

    An unprecedented, groundbreaking history of China's Great Famine Winner of the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize 2011 Winner of the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2011 Between 1958 and 1962, 45 million Chinese people were worked...

  • BookDepository

    Mao's Great Famine : Paperback : Bloomsbury Publishing PLC : 9781408810033 : 1408810034 : 20 May 2011 : An unprecedented, groundbreaking history of China's Great Famine Winner of the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize 2011

  • ASDA

    An unprecedented groundbreaking history of China's Great Famine Shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize 2011

  • 1408810034
  • 9781408810033
  • Frank Dikötter
  • 6 September 2010
  • Bloomsbury Publishing
  • Kindle Edition (Kindle Download)
  • 448
  • 1
  • Kindle eBook
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