Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine

Brief Description: Journalist Jasper Becker conducted hundreds of interviews and spent years immersed in detective work to produce this first full account of the dark chapter in Chinese history--Chairman Mao Ze-dong's secret famine of the late 1950s and early 1960s. In this horrific story of state-sponsored terror, cannibalism torture and murder, China's communist leadership boasted of record harvests and actually increased grain exports, while refusing imports and international assistance. 16-page photo insert. Review Quotes: "An accessible, masterly account of the greatest peacetime disaster of this century."--The New York Times Book ReviewBiographical Note: Jasper Becker is currently Beijing bureau chief for the" South China Morning Post." He has also written extensively on Chinese affairs for "The Guardian, The Economist, "and "The Spectato"r. He lives in Beijing. Marc Notes: Originally published: New York: The Free Press, 1977. Previous ed.: c1996.; Includes bibliographical references (p. [345]-366) and index. Publisher Marketing: In the tradition of John Hersey's "Hiroshima," journalist Jasper Becker's penetrating account of China's four-year famine uncovers the truth behind one of the darkest chapters in history. "Hungry Ghosts" is the horrific story of the state-sponsored terror, cannibalism, torture, and murder during Mao Zedong's "Great Leap Forward, " an attempt at utopian engineering gone wrong. This is the unforgettable story of the century's greatest human rights disaster, in which more people died than in Stalin's purges and the Holocaust put together. Becker conducted hundreds of interviews and spent years immersed in painstaking detective work to examine the unprecedented madness that plagued China between 1958 and 1962. For the first time since it was so ruthlessly and categorically erased from history, Becker unearths what really happened during these years, and how the famine and terror could have been kept a secret for so long. Review Citations:

New York Times 08/09/1998 pg. 28 (EAN 9780805056686, Paperback)

New York Review of Books 11/22/2012 pg. 30 (EAN 9780805056686, Paperback)

Kirkus Reviews 11/15/1996 pg. 1642 (EAN 9780684834573, Hardcover) - *Starred Review

Booklist 12/15/1996 pg. 695 (EAN 9780684834573, Hardcover)

Publishers Weekly 01/13/1997 pg. 65 (EAN 9780684834573, Hardcover)

New York Times 02/16/1997 pg. 6 (EAN 9780684834573, Hardcover)

Library Journal 01/01/1997 pg. 117 (EAN 9780684834573, Hardcover)

New York Times 06/01/1997 pg. 39 (EAN 9780684834573, Hardcover)

NY Times Notable Bks of Year 01/01/1997 pg. 70 (EAN 9780684834573, Hardcover)

NY Times Notable Bks of Year 01/01/1998 pg. 70 (EAN 9780684834573, Hardcover)

Wilson Public Library Catalog 01/01/1997 pg. 139 (EAN 9780684834573, Hardcover)

Contributor Bio:  Becker, Jasper Jasper Becker, an award-winning author, has worked as a foreign correspondent for twenty-five years, including fifteen years based in Beijing. He is author of Hungry Ghosts, The Chinese, and, most recently, Rogue Regime: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea. An expert on East Asianhistory and politics, Becker's work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, New Republic, The London Review of Books, National Geographic, and Time Asia.