... industrial growth. Maoists placed relentless pressure on communist cadres for ruthless implementation of the Great Leap Forward. Contrary to Maoist plans, China’s grain output in 1959-1960 declined sharply from 1957 levels and rural per capita grain retention decreased dramatically. Throughout China, party...

... to seven million additional deaths during the 1932 1933 famine could have been prevented. Although this is a comparative study of two great famines of the twentieth century, Wemheuer is a Sinologist rather than a Sovietologist. The book is the culmination of ten years of research on the Great Leap Forward...

... provinceofLadakh.Ultimately,inthiscase, internaploliticstrumpedfor eign diplomacyC. anada, to supportitsfarmerst,radedgrain toChina throughoutheGreat Leap Forwardperiod. Yixin Chen bringsnew perspectivesto theGreat Leap Forward in his articleM. ao, seeingChina as thenumber twocommunistnation in theworld, determinedto raise...

.... Although this is a comparative study of two great famines of the twentieth century, Wemheuer is a Sinologist rather than a Sovietologist. The book is the culmination of ten years of research on the Great Leap Forward, including PhD research in residence in Beijing. The Soviet material, based on secondary...

... collectivization, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. During these radical years, the state gained strict control and rural cadres indeed behaved as its agents. However, the state needed to provide peasants with material incentives to maintain the productivity of collective agriculture...

... diversified, struggling for new market niches. Today the region's hardwoods are drawing interest from as far away as Japan and Germany. Irland mixes his history with a careful description of ecological change in this forest mosaic. He leaps from William Wood's seventeenth-century observations to present-day...

... noncommercial farm children and nonfarm chil? dren, especially in New York State, had less school attendance. From this analysis, however, they take a gigantic leap of faith to argue that com? mercial farm women, influenced by agricultural journals became crucial players in the development of the common school...

... with the advent of running water and some health services, the village (and most of rural China) ran afoul of Mao's campaigns to transform society. The disastrous famine following the Great Leap Forward left millions of peasants ...

... of a physically and humanly "unique" Europe particularly capable of making a leap into modern economy. The right question for historians to ask therefore should not be how the Europeans' supposedly higher level of economic develop? ment and more advanced science and technology pushed them through the gate...

... populations. Chapter Three reveals that the Qing bureaucracy counterbalanced the environmental vulnerabilities of southern Mongolian pastoralism with relief in grain and silver that sustained an imperial pastoralism even as it undermined Mongol autonomy. Chapter Four leaps to the balmy southwest, where...

..., 1900, with high hopes, great ambition, and a naive expectation of rapid growth and development. Instead the century brought cycles of disappointment and failure, perseverance through hardship, stubborn optimism, and occasional leaps forward. By the end of the century, plains residents were chastened...

... of the western South in search of opportunity. Bernadette Pruitt s The Other Great Migration traces the lives, labors, and achievements of the African American migrants who contributed to Houston s leap from a regional center to an international city. Their journeys, she argues, represent a long-overlooked...

... in 1849. Since then, producers have diversified, struggling for new market niches. Today the region's hardwoods are drawing interest from as far away as Japan and Germany. Irland mixes his history with a careful description of ecological change in this forest mosaic. He leaps from William Wood's...

... analysis is strongest where she declines to take this leap, instead emphasizing in the second half of her work the range of forces that negatively affected pastoral livelihoods, such as the precipitous drop in the price of wool in France. Her Ottoman case study also illuminates the need to look beyond...

.... Although conditions had improved after the Communist Revolution of 1949 with the advent of running water and some health services, the village (and most of rural China) ran afoul of Mao's campaigns to transform society. The disastrous famine following the Great Leap Forward left millions of peasants Book...

... of trying to eat green or harvest unripe rice from the fields. Data manipulation on both sides contributed to the mistrust, with underreporting of the harvest coming from below and overestimation from above. With the increased politicization of hunger during the Leap, mention of famine all but disappeared...

... Pruitt s The Other Great Migration traces the lives, labors, and achievements of the African American migrants who contributed to Houston s leap from a regional center to an international city. Their journeys, she argues, represent a long-overlooked aspect of the Great Migration. Black migrants arriving...

.... Vella s speculative leaps are quite substantial and far beyond the limits of available evidence. Regarding Carver s sexuality she persistently refers to Jim Hardwick, one of the young men he met on his many travels, as Carver s great love. At one point she posits, It is delicate and easily contorted...

... of panda conservation: the Wanglang Nature Reserve in northern Sichuan. The first four chapters of the book explore the panda s rapid rise to prominence during the Mao years, first as a tool of mass education in the early 1950s, then, following the demographically and ecologically disastrous Great Leap...

... unconventional learning opportunities. Intellectual history, social and cultural history, and re? gional history fairly leap from its pages. Told here are the human accounts that made the Ranch School so attractive during the years between the world wars. Meticulous detail, such as a comprehensive list...