; I' t' j/ x. U, a$ GA book about China's disastrous Great Leap Forward policy has won the £20,000 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. . f$ k; X4 k$ |; C 6 K8 |# }; k/ V: ~7 {- mMao's Great Famine, by Dutch historian Frank Dikotter, beat five other short-listed titles to the award.* l; O9 q" o; e+ B: k
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Chair of the judges Ben Macintyre praised the book as an "epic record of human folly".6 s* R6 F9 ^" Y
8 ^3 @9 G9 X! j: ]4 BHe added it was "essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the history of the 20th Century". 2 I1 @4 b( x4 D! f ) I3 ~5 G" k5 S- I. v$ dMao's Great Famine reveals new details of the period from 1958-1962, providing fresh historical perspectives on Mao's campaign to increase industrial production during which tens of millions starved to death./ j: b& A8 [2 @3 E; P# N% C
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The academic - currently chair of professor of humanities at the University of Hong Kong - was one of a small number of historians to be given access into the Chinese archives. 3 ]( P% a( O, e1 |( H# u7 L! M9 w u: t9 G4 g. k" r
This year's runners-up were Andrew Graham Dixon's Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane, Maya Jasanoff's Liberty's Exiles, Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist, Jonathan Steinberg's Bismarck: A Life, and John Stubbs' Reprobates.* R' L- |1 W& a* y4 J- q. ?
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They each received £1,000.7 [1 z9 h2 h$ q# Q
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The prize was open to non-fiction books published in English by writers of any nationality between 1 May 2010 and 30 April 2011.
