Lillian Li's book on famine in north China has been a quarter century in the making. She has mined historical records for a combination of qualitative information and quantitative data to make possible a multi-faceted assessment of the economy and ecology of North China over a period of several hundred years. The book opens with an ecological overview of the Hai River Basin, covering most of the Qing capital province of Zhili and parts of Shandong, Shanxi and Henan. We learn of climatic fluctuations and environmental challenges to which Chinese officials and people typically responded by meeting immediate challenges and then suffering unintended and undesirable long-term consequences. Populations grew larger, flooding more common, and subsistence more difficult. The subsequent chapters of the book tell the story of how human efforts made the environment livable without ever creating comfort or prosperity.
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