The Great Famine (book review)

choi

Michael Fathers, A Most Secret Tragedy; The Great Leap Forward aimed to make China an industrial giant—instead it killed 45 million. Wall Street Journal, Oct 26, 2012
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... 15170039623486.html
(book review on Yang Jisheng, Tombstone; The Great Famine, 1958-1962. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012; and Zhou Xun (ed), The Great Famine in China, 1958-1962; A documentary history. Yale University Press, 1962)

Excerpt in the window of print: Anhui province was at the center of the famine. In 1958, it was given a quota by the central government of 45,000 arrests. Officials surpassed that goal, detaining 101,000 people, most of whom died of starvation in labor camps.

Note:
(a) Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971; First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 1953-1964)
(b) The review states "for the uncooperative, starvation was the punishment of first report."

resort (n): "one that affords aid or refuge : RESOURCE <went to them as a last resort>"

(c) The review also states, "Houses were knocked down for gigantic piggeries."

piggery (n): "a place where swine are kept"

(d) The review says, "Doors, windows, lintels and wooden beams were ripped from homes to provide fuel."
(i) lintel (n):
"a horizontal architectural member spanning and usually carrying the load above an opening"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lintel

Please see a sketch there.
(ii) A more general definition (with photos):

post and lintel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_and_lintel
(In architecture, a post-and-lintel or trabeated system refers to the use of horizontal beams or lintels which are borne up by columns or posts. The name is from the Latin trabs, beam)

(e) Joseph Needham (1900-1995)
(f) The review observes, "In 2010, Frank Dikötter produced "Mao's Great Famine," an authoritative account of the catastrophe, written with a bravura seldom seen in Western writing on modern China."
(i) Frank Dikötter, Mao's Great Famine; The history of China's most devastating catastrophe, 1958-1962. Bloombury Publishing, 2010.
(ii) bravura (n; Italian, literally, bravery, from bravare to show off — more at BRAVADO; First Known Use 1757):
"1: a musical passage requiring exceptional agility and technical skill in execution
2: a florid brilliant style
3: a show of daring or brilliance"

(g) The review avers, "It [Yang's quest] was, in part, expiation for his shame in not questioning his father's death."

expiate (v; Latin expiare to atone)