Without intending blasphemy, his U.S. assistants called him "Todd Almighty." He was trying to change the geography of a valley where 50,000,000 lived; he was trying to lift a terror that had recurred decade after decade for more than eight centuries; he was trying to create a farm region as big as Iowa. Oliver J. Todd of Palo Alto, Calif., engineer and humanitarian, was fighting the Yellow River.
Through the golden-green wheatfields of Honan Province, the twelfth longest river in the world ran sluggishly thick with yellowish silt from the loess lands of China's northwest. On its soggy banks last...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
