000			03231cam a22002538a 4500
001			036210
005			20231009192632.0
008			101126s2010 nyu b 001 0 eng
010			_a2010013141
020			_a9780802777683
050	0	0	_aHC430.F3 _bD55 2010
082	0	0	_a951.05 DIK
100	1		_aDikötter, Frank
245	1	0	_aMao's great famine _b: the history of China's most devastating catastrophe, 1958-1962 _c/ Frank Dikötter
260			_aNew York _b: Walker & Co. _c, 2010.
300			_axxi, 420 p., [8] p. of plates _b: ill., map _c; 25 cm.
504			_aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
505	0		_aTwo rivals -- The bidding starts -- Purging the ranks -- Bugle call -- Launching sputniks -- Let the shelling begin -- The people's communes -- Steel fever -- Warning signs -- Shopping spree -- Dizzy with success -- The end of truth -- Repression -- The Sino-Soviet rift -- Capitalist grain -- Finding a way out -- Agriculture -- Industry -- Trade -- Housing -- Nature -- Feasting through famine -- Wheeling and dealing -- On the sly -- "Dear chairman Mao" -- Robbers and rebels -- Exodus -- Children -- Women -- The elderly -- Accidents -- Disease -- The gulag -- Violence -- Sites of horror -- Cannibalism -- The final tally.
520			_a"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 Diktter'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." Diktter 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 meshing of exhaustive research in Chinese archives and narrative drive, Diktter 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.
650		0	_aFamines
650		0	_aFood supply
651		0	_aChina _x--Economic policy _y--1949-1976
942			_cMO
999			_c245573 _d245573