Tombstone, Yang Jisheng
Tombstone, Yang Jisheng
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Tombstone
The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962

Author: Yang Jisheng, Roderick MacFarquhar, Edward Friedman, Edward Friedman, Guo Jian, Stacy Mosher, Stacy Mosher, Guo Jian

Narrator: Nancy Wu

Unabridged: 22 hr 52 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 04/27/2021


Synopsis

The much-anticipated definitive account of China's Great Famine

An estimated thirty-six million Chinese men, women, and children starved to death during China's Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s and early '60s. One of the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century, the famine is poorly understood, and in China is still euphemistically referred to as "the three years of natural disaster."

As a journalist with privileged access to official and unofficial sources, Yang Jisheng spent twenty years piecing together the events that led to mass nationwide starvation, including the death of his own father. Finding no natural causes, Yang attributes responsibility for the deaths to China's totalitarian system and the refusal of officials at every level to value human life over ideology and self-interest.

Tombstone is a testament to inhumanity and occasional heroism that pits collective memory against the historical amnesia imposed by those in power.

About Yang Jisheng

Yang Jisheng was born in 1940, joined the Communist Party in 1964, and worked for the Xinhua News Agency from January 1968 until his retirement in 2001. He is now a deputy editor at Yanhuang Chunqiu (Chronicles of History), an official journal that regularly skirts censorship with articles on controversial political topics. He is the author of the book Tombstone.


Reviews

Goodreads review by sologdin on April 12, 2017

Nutshell: a mix of five-star primary reportage & archival work with one-star reckless inferences & commentary. Text is like Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago insofar as it is an indictment, proceeding from the position of internal critique, written by an author as yet subject to the jurisdiction o......more

Goodreads review by Eric on December 17, 2012

I give it a four because of the research and the context that the research is put in, which is remarkable, important and devastating. It isn't an easy read, and certainly not an enjoyable one. It is utterly horrifying - 36 million dead (according to the author who seems to have done a more thorough......more

Goodreads review by Mark on March 15, 2024

Yang Jisheng’s book is an excellent example of the distinction between a good book and a great reading experience. His study of the Chinese famine of 1958-62 provides a detailed account of the origins of the famine and its impact upon the population, one that is supported by interviews with survivor......more

This is one of “those” books—where I start with the audiobook and order the physical copy before I’m even halfway through. Because it’s so powerful that I need to have it as a reference…and I need to share it with everyone who wants to hear (still trying to get my dad to read this one). I waited so......more