---
title: The Great Leap Forward's 'sputnik' harvests and the famine that followed
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/great-leap-forward-yield-claims/
description: in 1958 China's Party press printed record crop yields as "sputniks". The records were added up into a national harvest figure, and the state took grain…
section: Case studies
---

![Illustration: a split dossier collage contrasting a 1950s intelligence briefing room with an analog newsroom monitoring wall.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/hero-then-and-now.jpg)

[Case studies](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/)

# The Great Leap Forward's 'sputnik' harvests and the famine that followed

At a glance

In 1958 China's Party press printed record crop yields as "sputniks". The records were added up into a national harvest figure…

- **When:** June 8, 1958
- **Actor:** Chinese Communist Party and the government of the People's Republic of China…
- **Target:** Rural cadres, peasants, urban readers and Party members in China…
- **Source:** Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- **Confidence:** **documented** Primary documents, court records, official disclosures
- **Techniques:** [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/) [Bandwagon](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/bandwagon/) [Glittering generalities](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/glittering-generalities/) [Testimonial](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/testimonial/) [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/) [Identity fusion](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/identity-fusion/) [Euphemism / doublespeak](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/euphemism/)
- **Regime:** [People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/peoples-republic-of-china-mao/)

Full details

- **Actor:** Chinese Communist Party and the government of the People's Republic of China (People's Daily, Xinhua, provincial and county Party committees); on the other side, the Republic of China government on Taiwan and the U.S. government
- **Target:** Rural cadres, peasants, urban readers and Party members in China; outside China, audiences in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the United States

On this page

- [What happened](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/great-leap-forward-yield-claims/#what-happened)
- [How it works](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/great-leap-forward-yield-claims/#how-it-works)
- [Then and now](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/great-leap-forward-yield-claims/#then-and-now)
- [Positions on the record](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/great-leap-forward-yield-claims/#positions-on-the-record)
- [Same-method test](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/great-leap-forward-yield-claims/#same-method-test)
- [How to spot it](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/great-leap-forward-yield-claims/#how-to-spot-it)
- [Images](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/great-leap-forward-yield-claims/#images)
- [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/great-leap-forward-yield-claims/#sources)

On this page

> **Content note.** This case concerns a famine in which tens of millions of people died. It quotes political labels used by the Chinese Communist Party ("right-opportunist anti-Party clique", "US imperialism") and by its rivals ("communist bandits", "Red China"). The labels are quoted as evidence of the method. They are not this archive's description of anyone.

**In one line:** in 1958 China's Party press printed record crop yields as "sputniks". The records were added up into a national harvest figure, and the state took grain against that figure. When the defence minister questioned the "wind of exaggeration" in 1959, the Party condemned him as the head of an "anti-Party clique", and questioning the numbers became a question of loyalty.

![Diagram: county yield records become People's Daily "sputniks", are summed into a national grain figure of 375 million tonnes, and set procurement quotas; at Lushan, doubt about the figures is recast as anti-Party activity](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/great-leap-forward-yield-claims-diagram.svg)

## What happened

- **November 1957.** In Moscow, Mao Zedong says China will overtake Britain in steel and other major output within 15 years (MacFarquhar 1983; Dikötter 2010).
- **8 and 12 June 1958.** The *People's Daily* reports record wheat yields from the Weixing ("Sputnik") cooperative in Suiping county, Henan: 2,105 *jin* per *mu*, then more than 3,500. The name sticks, and each new record is called "launching a sputnik" (放卫星). By the paper's own account, the same plot had yielded 750 *jin* per *mu* the year before. (One *jin* is half a kilogram; one *mu* is about one-fifteenth of a hectare.) (Yang 2012.)
- **16 June 1958.** The rocket scientist Qian Xuesen writes in *China Youth Daily* that, measured against the sunlight falling on a field, yields could be many times higher than the records so far (Becker 1996).
- **13 August 1958.** The *People's Daily* reports on its front page an early-rice record of 36,956 *jin* per *mu* from a commune in Macheng, Hubei. By September, reported rice records pass 130,000 *jin* per *mu*. The slogan "人有多大胆，地有多大产" ("the bolder the people, the more the land yields") circulates in the press that year (Yang 2012).
- **August 1958.** The Politburo meeting at Beidaihe sets a 1958 steel target of 10.7 million tonnes, double the 1957 output. Much of it is to come from small "backyard" furnaces (MacFarquhar 1983; Chan 2001).
- **November-December 1958.** The agriculture leadership proposes publishing a 1958 grain harvest of 750 billion *jin* (375 million tonnes) and says that exaggerated reports must not shake that "overall estimate". The Party announces the figure. State procurement is set against it (Central Party Literature Research Office 1995, vol. 11, pp. 585-586; Bernstein 1984).
- **14 July 1959, Lushan.** Defence Minister Peng Dehuai writes Mao a private letter criticising the "wind of exaggeration" and the backyard furnaces. On 17 July, Mao circulates it to the conference (Domes 1985; MacFarquhar 1983).
- **16 August 1959.** The Eighth Plenum's resolution condemns Peng, Huang Kecheng, Zhang Wentian and Zhou Xiaozhou as a "right-opportunist anti-Party clique" that had tried to "paint a pitch-black picture" of the situation (Domes 1985). The same plenum cuts the 1958 grain figure to 250 million tonnes (MacFarquhar 1983). An "anti-Right" campaign follows across the Party (CCP 1981). Later official statistics give the 1958 harvest as about 200 million tonnes.
- **1959-1961.** Famine, heaviest in the countryside. Estimates of excess deaths vary by method and source (see Positions on the record).
- **September 1959 onward.** Lin Biao replaces Peng as defence minister. He makes study of Mao's words part of daily army drill. In 1964 the army's General Political Department issues *Quotations from Chairman Mao*, first printed for the army only (Leese 2011; Cook 2014). The 1981 Resolution later says that in these years Mao's "personal arbitrariness" grew and "the personality cult gradually developed" (个人崇拜现象逐步发展) (CCP 1981, FRAME translation).
- **January 1962.** At the Seven Thousand Cadres Conference, President Liu Shaoqi tells the delegates that peasants in Hunan had described the disaster to him as "three parts natural, seven parts man-made" (三分天灾，七分人祸) (MacFarquhar 1997).
- **The other side of the Strait.** The Republic of China government on Taiwan calls the CCP *gongfei* (共匪, "communist bandits") and the mainland a "bandit area" (匪區). Its 1950 security statute is titled the Statute for the Denunciation and Suppression of *Bandit* Spies (戡亂時期檢肅匪諜條例). The PRC's own 1981 Resolution uses the labels "US imperialism" (美国帝国主义) and "Kuomintang reactionaries" (国民党反动派).
- **April-May 1962, Hong Kong.** By the CIA's count, more than 70,000 people cross from Guangdong into Hong Kong in May alone (Turgeon 1964). On 23 May, President Kennedy tells reporters that the U.S. is "providing food for about a half a million refugees in Hong Kong". He says there has been "no indication of any expression of interest or desire by the Chinese Communists" to receive U.S. food (Kennedy 1962). A classified CIA journal article of 1964 describes those admitted to the U.S. as "Red China refugees". It treats them as a source of information on "the most denied of denied areas" (Turgeon 1964).

![First page of "Windfall from Hong Kong", a CIA Studies in Intelligence article, Winter 1964](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/great-leap-forward-yield-claims-cia-windfall-1964.jpg)

*First page of "Windfall from Hong Kong" by Charles F. Turgeon, CIA,* Studies in Intelligence *vol. 8, Winter 1964. It was classified Confidential and approved for release in 1994. Public domain (U.S. government work), from the National Archives, Records of the Central Intelligence Agency (RG 263). Shown for the U.S. government's own wording ("Red China refugees", "the most denied of denied areas"). It is an internal intelligence paper, not public messaging.*

**Content note:** Editorial cartoon showing rows of open graves and coffins labelled as victims of hunger. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was) ![Ink editorial cartoon: a caricature of Mao Zedong, as the Library of Congress identifies it, reads a paper at a microphone beside a hammer-and-sickle flag, before a line of villagers and rows of open graves and coffins labelled "Victims of hunger in Red China"](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/great-leap-forward-yield-claims-valtman-commune-lot-1961.jpg)

*"By government decree every member of the commune is entitled to a private lot," ink editorial cartoon by Edmund S. Valtman, dated 1961, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (LC-DIG-ppmsc-07976; no known restrictions on publication). It is a U.S. newspaper cartoonist's response to the 1961 relaxation of commune controls and the famine, and uses the label "Red China" quoted in this case. It is an outside editorial view drawn in the U.S., not a record of events. It is shown as an example of Cold War imagery from outside the PRC, next to the CIA paper above; no openly licensed PRC image of the 1958 yield claims could be hosted (see Image gaps).*

## How it works

- [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/): the press printed the best plot, measured once, as the story. The costs stayed out: plants moved from other fields, close planting that lowered yields, and grain left in the field while labour went to the furnaces. The records were then summed into a national figure that set how much grain the state would take (Yang 2012; Dikötter 2010).
- [Bandwagon](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/bandwagon/): each "sputnik" was reported as beating the last, and counties and provinces competed to launch bigger ones. The run of records served as proof that the next one was possible. Kung and Chen (2011) tie the scale of this reporting to career competition among provincial leaders.
- [Glittering generalities](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/glittering-generalities/): "The bolder the people, the more the land yields" puts daring where a measurement should be. A low figure reads as a lack of courage, not as a report.
- [Testimonial](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/testimonial/): a famous scientist's arithmetic on sunlight and photosynthesis was printed as backing for yields many times higher than the records so far. Whether Qian's article shaped decisions at the top is disputed (see below).
- [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/): "right-opportunist anti-Party clique" was attached to Peng and three others before any open review of whether the figures they questioned were true. Rivals used labels too, though for a different job: they named a foreign or rival government, not a colleague whose figures were under review. "Communist bandits" in ROC usage, and "US imperialism" and "Kuomintang reactionaries" in PRC usage, name the other side before any claim about it is made.
- [Identity fusion](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/identity-fusion/): after Lushan, doubting the harvest figures was treated as an attack on the Party and its chairman. The "anti-Right" campaign that followed meant a cadre who reported a low figure could be accused of disloyalty, and misreporting grew after the plenum (Bernstein 1984; Yang 2012).
- [Euphemism / doublespeak](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/euphemism/): the Party's 1981 verdict speaks of "serious difficulties" and "heavy losses to the state and the people" in 1959-61. It names no famine and gives no death toll.

## Then and now

**Before: the Soviet Stakhanovite records.** On 31 August 1935, the Soviet press reported that the miner Aleksei Stakhanov had cut 102 tonnes of coal in under six hours, about 14 times his quota. Other workers soon "broke" his record. The records were used to justify raising output norms for everyone else (Overy 2004; Siegelbaum 1988). Officials in the Leap also called peasants "rural Stakhanovites" (Russo 2020). The two cases share a method: a staged or unrepresentative record is published as a new norm, and targets are reset against it. The difference is scale and consequence. Stakhanovite norms raised industrial quotas. The Leap's yield records fed straight into grain procurement during a famine.

**After: the Party's own verdicts.** The 1981 Resolution states that "Left" errors, marked by "excessive targets, arbitrary direction, the wind of exaggeration and the 'communist wind'", spread unchecked. It calls the 1959 resolution against Peng's "so-called anti-Party clique" "entirely wrong". It says that mainly because of the errors of the Leap and the "anti-Right" struggle, together with natural disasters and the Soviet government's "perfidious" cancelling of contracts, the economy fell into serious difficulty from 1959 to 1961 (CCP 1981, FRAME translation from the Chinese; the official English text renders 浮夸风 as "boastfulness"). Peng had died in detention in 1974 and was rehabilitated in 1978. The 2021 Resolution gives the episode one sentence: "Regrettably, the correct line adopted at the Party's Eighth National Congress was not fully upheld", and mistakes such as the Leap and the commune movement followed (CCP 2021, official English translation). Neither resolution gives a death toll. Yang Jisheng's *Tombstone*, which does, was published in Hong Kong in 2008 and has not been published on the mainland.

## Positions on the record

- **The CCP's position:** the Leap and the 1959 purge of Peng were serious errors. Losses came mainly from those errors, together with natural disasters and Soviet contract cancellations. Mao's merits outweigh his errors (CCP 1981; CCP 2021).
- **Critics:** Yang Jisheng, a former Xinhua reporter, estimates about 36 million deaths. He attributes the famine to Maoist policies and the political system. Frank Dikötter gives at least 45 million excess deaths. He writes that at least 2.5 million of the victims were tortured to death or summarily killed.
- **The ROC and the U.S. at the time:** the ROC's standing position was that the CCP was a "bandit" government with no claim to rule. The U.S. government said it was feeding refugees in Hong Kong and that Beijing had not asked for U.S. food; the CIA's own account shows it also debriefed refugees for intelligence.
- **What is documented:** the "sputnik" reports and their figures; the 375-to-250 million tonne revision; Peng's letter and the August 1959 resolution; the 1981 repudiation of that resolution; and a famine with excess mortality in the tens of millions in most demographic reconstructions.
- **What is not shown / disputed:** the death toll. Estimates include Jiang Zhenghua, about 17 million (1986); Peng Xizhe, 23 million (1987); Coale, 27 million (1984); Ashton and others, about 30 million (1984); Banister, about 30 million (1987); Cao Shuji, 32.5 million (2005); Yang, about 36 million (2012); and Dikötter, at least 45 million (2010). A minority of Chinese scholars, including Sun Jingxian (2016) and Yang Songlin (2013), give under 4 million and argue that migration was miscounted. Ó Gráda (2011) criticises Dikötter's handling of numbers. The split between natural and policy causes is contested. It runs from the 30/70 split Liu Shaoqi reported from Hunan peasants to the 1981 Resolution's listing of natural disasters beside errors. How much the top leadership knew, and when, is argued (Bernstein 2006). Whether Qian's article influenced Mao is asserted by some commentators and not established here. Specific ROC or U.S. propaganda aimed at mainland audiences about the famine (leaflets, broadcasts, balloon drops) is **not documented on this page**.

## Same-method test

The same finding would apply to any system in which a centre sets a numeric target, lower levels are rewarded for reporting it, and the reported figure then drives the next decision. U.S. forces in Vietnam used enemy "body count" as a main measure of progress. In Douglas Kinnard's survey of U.S. generals who had commanded there, published as *The War Managers* (1977), most said the count was often inflated. The difference in outcome is large: inflated body counts shaped assessments of a war, while inflated harvests set how much grain was taken from villages during a famine. The reporting method (a target, a reward for meeting it, and the report taken as the fact) would be scored the same way.

## How to spot it

- Ask how a record was measured: which plot, how large, who weighed it, and whether anyone outside the chain of command checked it.
- Watch for a record figure that becomes the planning figure. Once a best case sets a quota, the error moves from the newspaper into people's food.
- Notice when a question about a number is answered with a question about the asker's loyalty. That swap, not the number, is the warning sign.

## Images

| Image | Source | Licence |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Mechanism diagram (above) | Drawn for FRAME from the page's sourced facts (`make_diagrams.py`) | CC BY 4.0, FRAME |
| "Windfall from Hong Kong", CIA *Studies in Intelligence*, Winter 1964, first page | [U.S. National Archives, NAID 7283532](https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7283532), Records of the Central Intelligence Agency (RG 263) | Public domain (U.S. government work; NARA use restriction: unrestricted). Downscaled to 960px, otherwise unmodified |
| "By government decree every member of the commune is entitled to a private lot," cartoon by Edmund S. Valtman, 1961 | [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2016687288/), Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsc-07976 | No known restrictions on publication, per the Library of Congress record (Valtman collection). Downscaled to the LOC 1024 px service image |

### Image gaps

- **The *People's Daily* "sputnik" front pages (8 and 12 June, 13 August 1958).** Not included. A scan of the 13 August page is on Wikimedia Commons, but Commons lists it as "works copyrighted in the U.S." (URAA restoration), so it is not safely public domain in the U.S. **Not fillable** with a free licence at present; the page cites it instead.
- **Leap-era posters and photographs of record fields and backyard furnaces.** PRC posters and press photos from 1958-62 are generally not public domain in the U.S., and no specific U.S. public-domain rationale was found. **Not fillable** without such a rationale.
- **ROC anti-communist slogans and leaflets.** A Commons photo of a "消滅萬惡共匪" ("eliminate the utterly evil communist bandits") slogan on Green Island exists, tagged public domain in Taiwan. It was not used because the photographer, date and publication history are unknown, and it is only 550px wide. **Possibly fillable** with a documented ROC government leaflet or a dated photo.
- **U.S. government public statements (Kennedy's 23 May 1962 news conference film, USIA material on the Hong Kong exodus).** Likely public domain as U.S. government works, but the JFK Library and other sources could not be reached from the environment used to build this page. **Fillable.**

## Sources

- *People's Daily* (人民日报), 8 and 12 June 1958 (Suiping "Sputnik" cooperative wheat records) and 13 August 1958 (Macheng early-rice record); [scan of the 13 August 1958 front page, Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:People%27s_daily_13_Aug_1958_.jpg).
- Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, [Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People's Republic of China (关于建国以来党的若干历史问题的决议)](https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E5%BB%BA%E5%9B%BD%E4%BB%A5%E6%9D%A5%E5%85%9A%E7%9A%84%E8%8B%A5%E5%B9%B2%E5%8E%86%E5%8F%B2%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98%E7%9A%84%E5%86%B3%E8%AE%AE), adopted 27 June 1981 (Chinese text, Wikisource); [official English translation, marxists.org](https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/documents/cpc/history/01.htm).
- Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, [Resolution on the Major Achievements and Historical Experience of the Party over the Past Century (中共中央关于党的百年奋斗重大成就和历史经验的决议)](https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E4%B8%AD%E5%85%B1%E4%B8%AD%E5%A4%AE%E5%85%B3%E4%BA%8E%E5%85%9A%E7%9A%84%E7%99%BE%E5%B9%B4%E5%A5%8B%E6%96%97%E9%87%8D%E5%A4%A7%E6%88%90%E5%B0%B1%E5%92%8C%E5%8E%86%E5%8F%B2%E7%BB%8F%E9%AA%8C%E7%9A%84%E5%86%B3%E8%AE%AE), adopted 11 November 2021 (Chinese text, Wikisource); [official English translation, gov.cn](https://english.www.gov.cn/policies/latestreleases/202111/16/content_WS6193a935c6d0df57f98e50b0.html).
- Central Party Literature Research Office (中共中央文献研究室), *建国以来重要文献选编* (Selected Important Documents since the Founding of the State), vol. 11, Central Party Literature Press, 1995, pp. 585-586 (Tan Zhenlin and Liao Luyan report, November 1958).
- [John F. Kennedy, News Conference 34, 23 May 1962](https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-press-conferences/news-conference-34), John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
- [Charles F. Turgeon, "Windfall from Hong Kong", *Studies in Intelligence* 8 (Winter 1964), CIA; U.S. National Archives NAID 7283532](https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7283532).
- Roderick MacFarquhar, *The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, vol. 2: The Great Leap Forward 1958-1960*, Columbia University Press, 1983; and *vol. 3: The Coming of the Cataclysm 1961-1966*, Columbia University Press, 1997.
- Jürgen Domes, *Peng Te-huai: The Man and the Image*, Stanford University Press, 1985, pp. 94-101.
- Yang Jisheng, *Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962*, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012 (Chinese edition, Cosmos Books, Hong Kong, 2008).
- Frank Dikötter, *Mao's Great Famine*, Walker/Bloomsbury, 2010.
- Jasper Becker, *Hungry Ghosts: China's Secret Famine*, John Murray, 1996.
- Alfred L. Chan, *Mao's Crusade: Politics and Policy Implementation in China's Great Leap Forward*, Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 71-74.
- Thomas P. Bernstein, "Stalinism, famine, and Chinese peasants: Grain procurements during the Great Leap Forward", *Theory and Society* 13(3), 1984, pp. 339-377.
- Thomas P. Bernstein, "Mao Zedong and the Famine of 1959-1960: A Study in Wilfulness", *The China Quarterly* 186, 2006, pp. 421-445.
- James Kai-sing Kung and Shuo Chen, "The Tragedy of the Nomenklatura: Career Incentives and Political Radicalism during China's Great Leap Famine", *American Political Science Review* 105(1), 2011, pp. 27-45.
- Basil Ashton, Kenneth Hill, Alan Piazza and Robin Zeitz, "Famine in China, 1958-61", *Population and Development Review* 10(4), 1984, pp. 613-645.
- Judith Banister, *China's Changing Population*, Stanford University Press, 1987.
- Ansley J. Coale, *Rapid Population Change in China, 1952-1982*, National Academy Press, 1984.
- Peng Xizhe, "Demographic Consequences of the Great Leap Forward in China's Provinces", *Population and Development Review* 13(4), 1987, pp. 639-670.
- Jiang Zhenghua (蒋正华), "中国人口动态估计的方法和结果" (Methods and results of estimating China's population dynamics), *Journal of Xi'an Jiaotong University*, 1986, no. 3.
- Cao Shuji (曹树基), *大饥荒：1959-1961年的中国人口* (The Great Famine: China's Population in 1959-1961), Time International, Hong Kong, 2005.
- Sun Jingxian, "Population Change during China's 'Three Years of Hardship' (1959 to 1961)", *Contemporary Chinese Political Economy and Strategic Relations* 2(1), 2016, pp. 453-500.
- Yang Songlin (杨松林), *总要有人说出真相* (The Truth Must Be Told), Nanhai Publishing, Haikou, 2013; English edition *Telling the Truth: China's Great Leap Forward, Household Registration and the Famine Death Tally*, Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.
- Cormac Ó Gráda, "Great Leap into Famine: A Review Essay", *Population and Development Review* 37(1), 2011, pp. 191-202.
- Daniel Leese, *Mao Cult: Rhetoric and Ritual in China's Cultural Revolution*, Cambridge University Press, 2011.
- Alexander C. Cook (ed.), *Mao's Little Red Book: A Global History*, Cambridge University Press, 2014.
- Alessandro Russo, *Cultural Revolution and Revolutionary Culture*, Duke University Press, 2020, pp. 29-36.
- Republic of China, [戡亂時期檢肅匪諜條例](https://law.moj.gov.tw/LawClass/LawAll.aspx?pcode=C0000012) (Statute for the Denunciation and Suppression of Bandit Spies during the Period of Communist Rebellion), promulgated 13 June 1950, repealed 1992.
- Richard Overy, *The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia*, Allen Lane, 2004, p. 258.
- Lewis H. Siegelbaum, *Stakhanovism and the Politics of Productivity in the USSR, 1935-1941*, Cambridge University Press, 1988.
- Douglas Kinnard, *The War Managers*, University Press of New England, 1977.