Close to four stars.

In this book, De Waal makes the argument that famines have almost been eradicated from our times, but worryingly that recent developments in armed conflict seem to bring back some of it. Modern famine, he argues, is mostly a consequence of political decision.

I particularly found his first chapters very interesting and almost could not stop reading in them. He carefully lays out his arguments, discussed famine as a mass atrocity (very interesting and relevant!) and takes a lot of time to carefully refute what he terms 'Malthus zombie', the notion that overpopulation will lead to famine.

But after that it became slightly disappointing to me, mostly because the subject matter is so interesting but De Waal takes too little time to discuss this in-depth (maybe I should start reading his articles as well). His overview of modern famines was very brief and, the chapter I was most looking forward too, on current instances of famine (most notably Yemen and Syria) was really too short, considering these present a core part of his argument. It would have worked better for me if his case studies had been in-depth and elaborate analyses, rather than brief overviews.

But, his content is highly relevant and very interesting, so look forward to reading more from him!