Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–62, is a 2010 book by professor and historian Frank Dikötter about the Great Chinese Famine of 1958–1962 in the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong (1893–1976). It was based on four years of research in recently opened Chinese provincial, county, and city archives.

The book was well-received and won the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2011, and has been described by Andrew J. Nathan, Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Columbia University, as "the most detailed account yet" of the Great Chinese Famine. It received critical academic reviews, due to the book's selective use of sources, lack of context, methodological flaws, sensational tone, and distortion of evidence. Dikötter responded to some of criticisms. There was also criticism related to the image, which predated Mao's rule, used by Dikötter and the publisher for the cover.

Dikötter is Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong, where he teaches courses on both Mao and the Great Chinese Famine, and Professor of the Modern History of China from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. The author's research behind the book was funded in the United Kingdom by the Wellcome Trust, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the Economic and Social Research Council, and in Hong Kong by the Research Grants Council and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation. Dikötter was one of only a few historians granted access to the relevant Chinese archives.

On a website providing exposure for the book, Dikötter detailed his key arguments. First, he stated that the famine lasted at least four years (early 1958 to late 1962), not the three sometimes stated. After researching large volumes of Chinese archives, Dikötter came to the conclusion that decisions coming from the top officials of the Chinese government in Beijing were the direct cause of the famine. Beijing government officials, including Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, increased the food procurement quota from the countryside to pay for international imports. Dikötter wrote: "In most cases the party knew very well that it was starving its own people to death." In 1959, Mao was quoted as saying in Shanghai "When there is not enough to eat people starve to death. It is better to let half of the people die so that the other half can eat their fill."

Overall, Dikötter estimated that there were 45 million premature deaths, not 30 million as previously estimated. Some two to three million of these were victims of political repression, beaten or tortured to death, or summarily executed for political reasons, often for the slightest infraction. Because local communist cadres were in charge of food distribution, they were able to withhold food from anyone of whom they disapproved. Old, sick and weak individuals were often regarded as unproductive and hence expendable. Apart from Mao, Dikötter accused several other members of the top party leadership of doing nothing about the famine. While famine was ravaging the country, free food was still being exported to allies, as well as economic aid and interest-free or low-interest loans. In addition to the human suffering, some 30 to 40 percent of all rural housing was demolished in village relocations, for building roads and infrastructure, or sometimes as punishment for political opposition. Up to 50 percent of trees were cut down in some provinces, as the rural system of human ecology was ruined.

Dikötter's website listed positive responses from Orville Schell, former Dean of the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism; Simon Sebag-Montefiore, author of Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (2003); and Jung Chang, author of Mao: The Unknown Story (2005). Jasper Becker, author of Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine (1998), praised the book as a "brilliant work, backed by painstaking research ... . The archive material gathered by Dikötter ... confirms that far from being ignorant or misled about the famine, the Chinese leadership were kept informed about it all the time." Jonathan Fenby, author of The Penguin History of Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power, 1850–2009 (2009) and China Director at the research service Trusted Sources, praised Dikötter's "masterly book", and stated that his "painstaking research in newly opened local archives makes all too credible his estimate that the death toll reached 45 million people." Sinologist Roderick MacFarquhar said that the book is "Pathbreaking ... a first-class piece of research. ... [Mao] will be remembered as the ruler who initiated and presided over the worst man-made human catastrophe ever. His place in Chinese history is assured. Dikötter's book will have done much to put him there."

Jonathan Mirsky, a historian of China and journalist specialising in Asian affairs, wrote in Literary Review that Dikötter's book "is for now the best and last word on Mao's greatest horror. Frank Dikötter has put everyone in the field of Chinese studies in his debt, together with anyone else interested in the real China. Sooner or later the Chinese, too, will praise his name." About Mao's legacy in the book, Mirsky commented: "In terms of Mao's reputation this book leaves the chairman for dead, as a monster in the same league as Hitler and Stalin – and that is without considering the years of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), when hundreds of thousands more Chinese died."

Steven Yearley, Professor of the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge at the University of Edinburgh, said that the book "stands out" from other works on the famine "on account of its basis in recently opened archives and in the countless compelling details which are provided to clarify the interlocking themes of the text."