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Rating: 
Summary: against pop historiography and hyperbole
Review: This book is a classic and one of the most important accounts of land reform in the 1940s and 50s. The sequel _Shenfan_ is also good, and is also considered a classic in academic circles. Note that even conseravative scholars like Needham praise these books.
I'm writing this review mainly in response to reviewer Smallchief's comment that the book is "naive" b/c it paints too positive a picture in light of the "starvation" of "tens of millions" of peasants in the 1950s. I don't want to disrespect Smallchief. Unfortunately this kind of ahistorical hyperbole has become "common knowledge" as the Mao-bashing discourse of narratives like _Wild Swans_ has achieved hegemonic status during the past few years. I say "ahistorical" not because the numbers are wrong (although they do tend to grow over the years--i recently saw the figure 100 million for the number of people that Mao "killed"!), but that they are thrown around outside of historical context, as if you could say anything meaningful about history or about a social system with mere numbers. But if we must play the numbers game, when you talk about starvation (of course it's usually disease the kills people, even in times of famine--"starvation" just has more shock value: we picture Mao selfishly hoarding all the rice from skeletal children), during the most rapid and egalitarian improvement in quality of life in world history, it's necessary to compare statistics of deaths during the Great Leap famine with those prior to the revolution. If you do that, you'll notice that at least as many people died in an average year before the revolution than during the worst year of the famine!(1960)(i'm getting this insight from Brian Turner, who's writing a paper on the subject; Utsa Patnaik says something similar(...). In this light we can see the problem with using any number--whether tens of thousands or tens of millions--to categorically denounce the accomplishment of the Chinese revolution and the social system that the CCP tried to build.
As for the later attempt to democratize that system (the Cultural Revolution), and as for the Dengists "reform" or counter-revolution, _Fanshen_ provides a basis on which to understand those events, and Hinton offers a some useful insights into them in his later works: _The Hundred Day War_, _Shenfan_, _The Great Reversal_, and _Through a Glass Darkly_ (still in press). The best general history of the PRC is _Mao's China and After_ by Maurice Meisner.
Rating:
Summary: against pop historiography and hyperbole
Review: This book is a classic and one of the most important accounts of land reform in the 1940s. The sequel _Shenfan_ is also good, and is also considered a classic in academic circles. Note that even conseravative scholars like Needham praise these books. I'm writing this review mainly in response to reviewer Smallchief's comment that the book is "naive" b/c it paints too positive a picture in light of the "starvation" of "tens of millions" of peasants in the 1950s. I don't want to disrespect Smallchief. Unfortunately this kind of ahistorical hyperbole has become "common knowledge" as the Mao-bashing discourse of narratives like _wild swans_ has achieved hegemonic status during the past few years. I say "ahistorical" not because the numbers are wrong (although they do tend to grow over the years--i recently saw the figure 100 million for the number of people that Mao "killed"!), but that they are thrown around outside of historical context, as if you could say anything meaningful about history or about a social system with mere numbers. But if we must play the numbers game, when you talk about starvation (of course it's usually disease the kills people, even in times of famine--"starvation" just has more shock value: we picture Mao selfishly hoarding all the rice from skeletal children), during the most rapid and egalitarian improvement in quality of life in world history, it's necessary to compare statistics of deaths during the Great Leap famine with those prior to the revolution. If you do that, you'll notice that at least as many people died in an average year before the revolution than during the worst year of the famine!(1960)(i'm getting this insight from Brian Turner, who's writing a paper on the subject; Utsa Patnaik says something similar--see:
http://www.chinastudygroup.org/articleshow.php?id=56 ). In this light we can see the problem with using any number--whether tens of thousands or tens of millions--to categorically denounce the accomplishment of the Chinese revolution and the social system that the CCP tried to build. As for the later attempt to democratize that system (the Cultural Revolution), and as for the Dengists' "reform" or counter-revolution, _Fanshen_ provides a basis on which to understand those events, and Hinton offers a some useful insights into them in his later works: _The Hundred Day War_, _Shenfan_, _The Great Reversal_, and _Through a Glass Darkly_ (still in press). The best general history of the PRC is _Mao's China and After_ by Maurice Meisner.
Rating:
Summary: What they didn't teach you in school
Review: This book is a must read for all of those interested in getting a more in-depth view of the impetus for the revolution in China, namely the absolutely horrific living and working conditions of poor peasants which included years of famine, exploitation by the landlords and barbaric victimization at the hands of the ruling gentry. Also gives an in-depth view of the committment and work of both Communists and non-Communists toward transforming Chinese society and correcting centuries of injustices. Especially if you were raised in America during the McCarthy era you will benefit from reading this book, by balancing the propaganda you have recieved through the media, the education system and rascal politicians your whole life.
Rating: 
Summary: Thinly veiled propaganda
Review: This is a view of the Chinese revolution by a sympatheic American observer. He is so enamored by the Communist ideology that he barely passes comment on the horrific things that happen: 1) The villagers quickly find that the better off peasant women take much more torture to reveal their money than the men do; 2) Repeated rapes of upper class women are dismissed as "lapses in discipline"; 3) The village Party leaders get their share of "thought reform" in a preview of the cultural revolution that will shake China in the 60's. Worth reading to see just what Communism was really about, from someone who thought it was a good idea. Makes you wonder what he left out.
Rating:
Summary: China from the peasants point of view
Review: William Hinton's account of centuries of local economic and social inequality turned on its head in a land reform movement led democratically by the poorest peasants is not an academic history based on documents, but an actual play-by-play account thanks to the rare opportunity Hinton had to spend extensive time in this Shanxi Province village over a 5 year period in the late 1940's and early 1950's. This initial land redistribution is still the basis for modern China's rural economic system, and is why China has one of the most equal distributions of land in all the developing world (along with the cooperatives that prevent reconcentration of land holdings). The struggle for "gongtong fuyu" (shared prosperity) got its start here. Put this classic in your China/Asia book collection before it falls out of print again.
Rating: 
Summary: Revolution at the grassroots
Review: You've heard the old joke about the guy who says he would rather be a drunk than an alcoholic because alcoholics have to go to all those meetings. That's what this book is about: meetings -- innumerable, endless meetings in a small village in revolutionary China. For three years (1946-1948, it seems that the peasants in this village met every day to discuss how to divvy up the land taken from the landlords, select their leaders, discuss the correct "line" of the revolution, criticize each other, and punish evil doers. Hinton is an enthusiast for Chairman Mao and the communists, but he doesn't gloss over the excesses of the revolution. He paints a vivid picture of life in prerevolutionary China and an equally vivid picture of the implementation of Maoism in the countryside with all its violence, doctrinal hair-splitting, changes in direction, and imperfections. At the end of the book, he concludes that the peasants and the revolution have achieved a proper balance between equity and production in the Chinese countryside and presumably everyone will live happily ever after. As a story about life in the countryside this book is outstanding. As a book about the makings of a revolution at the peasant level it is outstanding. As a book about land reform and Maoism, it is much, much less than prophetic. Hinton leaves us with a warm, post revolutionary feeling that all was well in the Chinese countryside in 1948. But all was not well. Tens of millions of Chinese peasants starved to death in the 1950s. Maybe they were spending too much time in revolutionary meetings and not enough time working in their fields. Revolutionary enthusiasts such as Hinton need to be called to account for the errors they make in their ardor and naivete. Perhaps we should have a meeting on that....
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