Mao's Great Famine

Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–62, is a 2010 book by professor and historian Frank Dikötter about the Great Chinese Famine of 1958–1962. Based on four years of research in recently opened Chinese provincial, county, and city archives, the book constructs what Andrew J. Nathan, Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Columbia University writing in Foreign Affairs, describes as "the most detailed account yet" of the experiences of the Chinese people during the famine, which occurred under the Communist regime of Mao Zedong. The book supports an estimate of "at least" 45 million premature deaths in China during the famine years. Dikötter characterises the Great Famine as...