Frank Dikotter - Mao's Great Famine ADDED EVENT!
Free Event - Open to the Public
San Francisco store
Order a signed copy
Frank Dikotter presents Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962 ($30.00). Dikötter makes clear 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, 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.
- Street:
- Book Passage
- Additional:
- 1 Ferry Building
- City:
- San Francisco ,
- Province:
- California
- Postal Code:
- 94111
- Country:
- United States
