What we can learn from history

Xujun Eberlein reviews two accounts of the great Chinese famine. Money quote:

The Chinese have a saying: “The past that is not forgotten becomes the teacher of the future.” If the famine was the deliberate act of an individual villain (Mao Zedong) as demonic as Hitler or Stalin, then, the villain long dead, the matter is settled. On the other hand, if it was the result of failings in the social and political systems that, at least in part, still persist, then there are important lessons for today’s leaders.

The article appears in the Los Angeles Review of Books, a primarily online-based publication, and an increasingly good source of such material. If you enjoy literary criticism, you may find many of its essays greatly illuminating.