Mao’s Great Famine, by Frank Dikötter

Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe (2010)

Part of a three book series, written by one of the first Western scholars to be given access to the state archives. This book covers the ultimate optimization catastrophe: a society reengineered toward a projected future at the cost of tens of millions. I include it because the chapter is not speaking in metaphor. When a system optimizes hard enough toward a modelled outcome, the people who fall outside the model are not an externality. They are the cost.

Read it asking: Mao was willing to sacrifice millions if it meant reaching prosperity and strength for China. Did he succeed?