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Three Famines (2010)

by Thomas Keneally(Favorite Author)

3.15 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1741668557 (ISBN13: 9781741668551)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Random House/Knopf Australia

review 1: "There is no end to politicians who pursue, at the cost of all compassion and paying the price of human flesh, their denials, dogmas and ideologies. ... In Ethiopia and in many food crises of the present and recent past, it is oppression, war and 'civic mayhem' that have been the main reasons for famine mortality."This book is rather confusingly organized and poorly written, and missing most citations that would give the author a lot more credibility, but still gives a good look at the politics of famine and the government policy-induced things that elevate a food shortage or drought to famine proportions. A good reminder that just pouring money or food into a starving country isn't necessarily an effective solution to a problem that is much broader than poor crop y... moreield.
review 2: Keaneally runs the narrative of three famines--the 1840s Irish Potato Famine, the 1940s Bengal Famine and the Ethiopian Famine of the 1970s in parallel under thematic chapters like "villains," "whistleblowers," "evictions and emigration" and "God's Hand (how each society believed their situation was diving wrath of some retributive nature)". This is simplistic, but effective, if you have never heard of the Durg or thought about India in WWII. Keneally is writing popular history requiring a lot of background and "story"rather than analysis, with the point that although natural triggers happen all the time, famines are the result of clusterfucks of politics, prejudices, greed, bad information and poor infrastructure. less

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