Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962
Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962is methodical and factual, and it amounts to a devastatingly clear account of Mao and his era. In the me of building Communist utopia overnight, farmworkers were diverted to labor on industry and infrastructure; agricultural work was collectivized and thrown into disorder; high-ranking bureaucrats imposed useless and destructive pseudoscientific farming methods on the countryside. Local officials, vying to demonstrate the greatest commitment to progress, reported fraudulent crop yields, and the government requisitioned its due share of the non-existent bumper crops. Even with such shocking stories driving the narrative, the true horror ofTombstoneis that it’s not sensational. It is, rather, a meticulous accumulation of evidence and fact. —Tom Scocca