Tombstone: The Untold Story of Mao's Great Famine

From 1959 to 1962, tens of millions of people died in a famine caused not by unusual weather or the withdrawal of aid from the Soviet Union but from the monopolization of production, according to journalist Yang Jisheng. While estimates of the total deaths range from 20 million to 70 million, the deaths were all avoidable. Yang's research from Communist Party archives includes meteorological records that refute the cause of the famine as bad weather. In one year, grain procurement quotas went up by 20 percent. The rural residents forced to supply the grain quotas suffered the most and starvation drove thousands to cannibalism.