Becker, Jasper — Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine

London John Murray Paperback, 23 cm, 352 pp. Ills.: black and white illustrations. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Chinese people suffered what may have been the worst famine in history. Over thirty million perished in a grain shortage brought on not by flood, drought, or infestation, but by the insanely irresponsible dictates of Chairman Mao Ze-dong's "Great Leap Forward," an attempt at utopian engineering. Cond.: zeer goed / very good. ISBN: 0719554403.