Almost all of us living in developed countries have no experience and very little understanding of famine and starvation. We think of it as something that happens mainly in Africa, whereas in the last 100 years the biggest mass starvations have been in China and Europe. And we think of it as a force of nature, a natural consequence of failing food supplies; this misconception, which de Waal calls "Malthus's zombie", is the one which this book sets out to tackle. Famine, in almost all instances, has political causes, and can be avoided if there is political will to do so. De Waal demonstrates this by looking at the causes of all famines in the last 150 years, and by studying the incredible near-eradication of famine in the last 30 years. He takes a close look at Ethiopia, where specific measures to eradicate famine mean that recent food crises have not led to any additional deaths (despite this being a country where the food supply is fragile and the population has increased fourfold in the last 50 years). If Ethiopia can put an end to mass starvation, he argues, the rest of the world can too. In fact, he argues that allowing mass starvation ought to be considered a deliberate crime against humanity, on a par with genocide.

The book sounds one note of caution: in 2017, for the first time in some 30 years, mass starvation is again on the rise, and Yemen and Syria are experiencing the first mass starvations in the Middle East in over 100 years. These new famines are all political in origin, and avoidable. They appear to herald a rise in counter-humanitarianism: the belief that some lives have no value. We have made great progress against mass starvation in the last century, but there are signs that that progress is now going into reverse.