Selected Books in English on Genocide and related topics

2004

Roméo Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil (Random House of Canada, 2003), 584 pages. This book was published in Canada in October 2003 and will be published in the USA in August 2004. US customers can purchase the book now from www.amazon.ca and other Canadian web booksellers.

"I did try to write this story soon after I came back from Rwanda in September 1994, hoping to find some respite for myself in sorting out how my own role as Force Commander of UNAMIR [United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda] interconnected with the international apathy, the complex political manoeuvres, the deep well of hatred and barbarity that resulted in a genocide in which over 800,000 people lost their lives. Instead, I plunged into a disastrous mental health spiral that led me to suicide attempts, a medical release from the Armed Forces, the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, and dozens upon dozens of therapy sessions and extensive medication, which still have a place in my daily life. It took me seven years to finally have the desire, the willpower and the stamina to begin to describe in detail the events of that year in Rwanda. To recount, from my insider’s point of view, how a country moved from the promise of a certain peace to intrigue, the fomenting of racial hatred, assassinations, civil war and genocide"
"My story is not a strictly military account nor a clinical, academic study of the breakdown of Rwanda. It is not a simplistic indictment of the many failures of the UN as a force for peace in the world. It is not a story of heroes and villains, although such a work could easily be written. This book is a cri de coeur for the slaughtered thousands, a tribute to the souls hacked apart by machetes because of their supposed difference from those who sought to hang on to power. It is the story of a commander who, faced with a challenge that didn’t fit the classic Cold War–era peacekeeper’s rule book, failed to find an effective solution and witnessed, as if in punishment, the loss of some of his own troops, the attempted annihilation of an ethnicity, the butchery of children barely out of the womb, the stacking of severed limbs like cordwood, the mounds of decomposing bodies being eaten by the sun. This book is nothing more nor less than the account of a few humans who were entrusted with the role of helping others taste the fruits of peace. Instead, we watched as the devil took control of paradise on earth and fed on the blood of the people we were supposed to protect." - Roméo Dallaire Read an excerpt from Shake Hands with the Devil .

Linda Melvern, Conspiracy to murder : the Rwanda genocide (London ; New York : Verso, 2004) www.versobooks.com

Linda Melvern’s new book, the result of a decade of investigative work, is a damning indictment of almost all the key figures and the institutions involved. It reveals how the French military trained the killers, how the US is still withholding wiretap and satellite evidence that the genocide was about to begin, how the John Major government ignored vital warnings that the genocide was planned, how much Boutros Boutros-Ghali and the French government knew prior to the genocide and how the Security Council’s shameful decision to evacuate the peacekeepers came about. In addition to these official sources, the author draws on dozens of witness statements yet to be heard at the International Criminal Tribunal, at which she will be an expert witness, and a sixty-hour confession from the prime minister in the government that presided over the genocide never before made publicly available and currently locked in the safe of the chief prosecutors at the ICT court. Linda Melvern is a well-known and widely published investigative journalist. She is an Honorary Fellow of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and was a consultant to the Military One prosecution team at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda. Her previous books include The Ultimate Crime, a secret history of the UN’s first fifty years, and A People Betrayed.

Jay Winter, Paul Kennedy, Antoine Prost, Emmanuel Sivan (Editors, America and the Armenian Genocide of 1915 336 pages Publisher: Cambridge University Press; (January 2004) Publisher: Cambridge University Press; (January 2004) 336 pages

The essays in this collection examine how Armenians learned of this catastrophe and tried to help its victims. Knowledge and compassion, however, were not enough to stop the killings, and a terrible precedent was born in 1915. The Armenian genocide has haunted the U.S. and other Western countries throughout the twentieth century. Contents Introduction: Witness to genocide Jay Winter Part I. The Framework: 1. Twentieth-century genocides Sir Martin Gilbert 2. Genocide in the perspective of total war Jay Winter 3. The Armenian genocide: an interpretation Vahakn N. Dadrian Part II. During the Catastrophe: 4. A friend in power? Woodrow Wilson and Armenia John Milton Cooper 5. Wilsonian diplomacy and Armenia: the limits of power and ideology Lloyd E. Ambrosius 6. American diplomatic correspondence in the age of mass murder: documents of the Armenian Genocide in the US Archives Rouben Paul Adalian 7. The Armenian genocide and American missionary relief efforts Suzanne Moranian 8. Mary Louise Graffam: witness to genocide Susan Billington Harper 9. From Ezra Pound to Theodore Roosevelt: American intellectual and cultural responses to the Armenian genocide Peter Balakian Part III. After the Catastrophe: 10. The Armenian genocide and US postwar commissions Richard G. Hovannisian 11. Congress confronts the Armenian genocide Donald A. Ritchie 12. When news is not enough: American media and Armenian deaths Thomas C. Leonard.

2003

Eric D. Weitz, A century of genocide : utopias of race and nation, Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 2003.

Eric Weitz investigates four of the twentieth century's major eruptions of genocide: the Soviet Union under Stalin, Nazi Germany, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, and the former Yugoslavia. Drawing on historical sources as well as trial records, memoirs, novels, and poems, Weitz explains the prevalence of genocide in the twentieth century--and shows how and why it became so systematic and deadly. Weitz depicts the searing brutality of each genocide and traces its origins back to those most powerful categories of the modern world: race and nation. He demonstrates how, in each of the cases, a strong state pursuing utopia promoted a particular mix of extreme national and racial ideologies. Read the introduction ( http://pup.princeton.edu/chapters/i7491.html)

2002

Joyce Apsel and Helen Fein., Teaching About Genocide":An Interdisciplinary Guidebook with syllabi for College and University Teachers, New Edition; Published for the Institute of the Study of Genocide in cooperation with the American Sociological Association, New edition, 2002.

Contents: Helen Fein, Reflections on Studying Genocide for Three Decades Joyce Apsel, Teaching about Genocide, COURSE SYLLABI AND OTHER TEACHING RESOURCES (Study Questions, Topic Reports, Research, Exams, Bibliography) Armenian Genocide: Henry Theriault, Clark University, Political Science-- The Armenian Genocide Holocaust: Berel Lang, Trinity College, Humanities--The Holocaust: Historical, Philosophical and Literary Aspects; Robert Skloot, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Theatre and Drama-- The Holocaust Theme in Western Drama Genocide and Holocaust: William Brustein, University of Minnesota, Sociology-- Topics in Political Sociology: Politics of Hate & Genocide; Herbert Hirsch, Virginia Commonwealth University, Political Science-- Genocide and Holocaust; Eric Markusen, Southwest State University, Social Work and Sociology-- The Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights; Gordon Mork and Robert Melson, Purdue University, Political Science and History-- Holocaust and Genocide Genocide: Joyce Apsel, Drew University, History-- Genocide after 1945 in the Century of Genocide; Frank Chalk, Concordia University (Canada), History-- History and Sociology of Genocide (two semesters); Alex Hinton, Rutgers University, Anthropology--Anthropology of Genocide; Steven Jacobs, University of Alabama, Religious Studies--Religion and Genocide; Rene Lemarchand, University of Copenhagen, Political Science-- Comparative Genocide; Mark Levene, University of Warwick (United Kingdom), History-- From Armenia to Rwanda: Genocide in Contemporary History (two semesters); Roger W. Smith, College of William and Mary, Political Science-- Human Destructiveness and Politics; Linda M. Woolf, Webster University, Psychology-- Genocide: A Psychosocial Perspective Genocide, Human Rights and International Affairs: Alex Alvarez, Northern Arizona University, Sociology-- Genocide, War Crimes and Human Rights Violations; Frank Chalk, Concordia University (Canada), History--American Foreign Policy and Humanitarian Intervention in the 20th Century; Bernard F. Hamilton, University of London, Birkbeck College, International Affairs/Law--International Responses to Genocide and Similar Violations in Armed Conflict; Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, McMaster University (Canada), Sociology-- Human Rights and Genocide; Marianna Sullivan and Morton Winston, The College of New Jersey, Political Science and Philosophy-- Human Rights in International Affairs; Morton Winston, The College of New Jersey, Philosophy--Human Rights Contributor Biographies and e-mail Addresses Selected Internet Websites on Genocide. See http://www.isg-iags.org/newsletters/29/tagrev.html

Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide New York : Basic Books, 2002, 384 pp.

Samantha Power, The executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Power examines how Americans have very rarely marshaled their might to stop genocide and mass terror against Armenians, European Jews, Cambodians, Iraqi Kurds, Bosnians, and Rwandans. Power writes, "Whatever America's commitment to Holocaust remembrance (embodied in the presence of the Holocaust Museum on the Mall in Washington, D.C.), the United States has never intervened to stop genocide. This book is an effort to understand why. While the history of America's response to genocide is not an uplifting one, "A Problem from Hell" tells the stories of countless Americans who took seriously the slogan of "never again" and tried to secure American intervention. Only by understanding the reasons for their small successes and colossal failures can we understand what we as a country, and we as citizens, could have done to stop the most savage crimes of the last century." Drawing upon declassified cables, private papers, exclusive interviews with Washington's top policy-makers, and her own reporting from the modern killing fields in Bosnia in 1993, Power brings a story-teller's gift for gripping narrative together with a reporter's hunger for the inside story. With the authority of one who has witnessed such atrocities herself, Power goes on to set a visionary and yet feasible agenda for how the United States might change course to prevent or halt future genocide. "A Problem from Hell" makes a riveting moral argument for why, as both great power and global citizen, we must renew our vigilance against genocide. Power's chapter on Rwanda can be read online as "Bystanders to Genocide" in the September 2001 issue of the Atlantic Monthly . Also her conclusion was published in the New York Review of Books March 14, 2002. See Genocide and America .

2001

Alex Alvarez, Governments, citizens, and genocide : a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, (Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2001), 240 pp.

A synthesis of the literature on genocide from a sociological and criminological perspective, discussing the crime of genocide through a distinctly social science lens, with specific references to the ideas and concepts that have been developed to explain criminal behavior. The book has 6 chapters: 1. The Age of Genocide, 2. A Crime by Any Other Name, 3. Deadly Regimes, 4. Lethal Cogs, 5. Accommodating Genocide, and 6. Confronting Genocide. His primary areas of study previous to this book have focused on minorities, crime, and criminal justice, as well as on collective and interpersonal violence. He has published on Native Americans, Latinos, and African Americans, fear of crime, sentencing, justifiable and criminal homicide, and genocide. Alex Alvarez is Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Northern Arizona University. http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~aa/

Kenneth J. Campbell, Genocide and the global village , Palgrave (formerly St. Martin’s), August 2001.

Campbell explains why the international community fails so miserably to prevent, suppress, and punish contemporary genocide. The book integrates the scattered pieces of this complex problem – political, military, legal, and ethical – into a more complete, clearer picture of the challenge facing the world today. Campbell engages in a complex, multi-level analysis of genocide’s impact upon world order, and the inter-play of politics and morality in the international community’s determination of the appropriate role for military force in halting genocide and securing an emerging global civil society. Contents: Introduction: Return of an “Odious Scourge” * The Grand-Strategic Context * Misunderstanding Genocide * Misusing Force * Misreading the Public * Genocide in Bosnia * Genocide in Rwanda * Genocide in Kosovo * Remedy * Conclusion: Towards a Better Twenty-First Century. Kenneth J. Campbell is Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware. http://www.udel.edu/poscir/kjcamp.htm

John G. Heidenrich, How to prevent genocide : a guide for policymakers, scholars, and the concerned citizen, (Westport, Conn. : Praeger, 2001), 296pp.

This book explores various foreign policy options for the prevention of genocide abroad. Research was funded in part by a grant from the United States Institute of Peace. Subtopics in the book include: · International law and international ethics · Humanitarian intervention · Peacekeeping and peace enforcement · Intelligence issues, including early warning measures · The relative effectiveness of diplomacy, economic pressure, and nonviolent resistance · The role of the United Nations, NATO, and other international organizations · The influence of the news media · The role of politics and propaganda · Psychological and sociological factors, including ideology and religion · Cultural and Holocaust-based perspectives on genocide.     John G. Heidenrich was for 2 years senior analyst with Open Source Solutions (OSS) Inc., where he is responsible for monitoring and reporting on war crimes and the potential for genocide in countries worldwide. Formerly an analyst with the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), he later joined the Institute for Defense & Disarmament Studies (IDDS), a nonprofit think-tank in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he directed its Project on Genocide Prevention. He holds an MPA degree from Harvard University and a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from the American University in Washington, DC

2000

Gary Jonathan Bass, Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals, Princeton University Press, 2000, 402 pp.

Gary Jonathan Bass, a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton and a former reporter for the Economist, examines several cases: the trials of Bonapartists in 1815, trials following World War I of German war criminals and of Turks who carried out the genocide of the Armenians, the Nuremberg trials and their equivalents in Tokyo, and contemporary efforts to prosecute individuals guilty of war crimes in Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Chapter One: Introduction 3 Chapter Two: St. Helena 37 Chapter Three: Leipzig 58 Chapter Four: Constantinople 106 Chapter Five: Nuremberg 147 Chapter Six: The Hague 206 Chapter Seven: Conclusion 276 Chapter Eight: Epilogue 284 http://pup.princeton.edu/chapters/s6925.html

William A. Schabas, Genocide in International Law: The Crime of Crimes, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 624 pp.

The provisions of the 1948 Genocide Convention are now being interpreted in important judgments by the International Court of Justice, the ad hoc Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and increasingly in domestic courts. In this definitive work William A. Schabas gives detailed attention to the concept of protected groups, the quantitative dimension of genocide, problems of criminal prosecution, and issues of international judicial cooperations such as extradition. He explores the duty to prevent genocide, and the consequences this may have on the emerging law of humanitarian intervention. Contents: Introduction; 1. Origins of the legal prohibition of genocide; 2. Drafting of the Convention and subsequent normative developments; 3. Groups protected by the Convention; 4. The physical element of the offence of actus reus; 5. The mental element of the offence or mens rea; 6. 'Other acts' of genocide; 7. Defences to genocide; 8. Prosecution of genocide by international and domestic tribunals; 9. State responsibility and the role of the international court of justice; 10. Prevention of genocide; 11. Treaty law questions and the Convention; Conclusion. Click here to read the Frontispiece, Table of Contents and Chapter 1 of William Schabas's Genocide in International Law, (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000) [23 page PDF file]

1999

The Encyclopedia of Genocide, Israel W. Charny, Editor in Chief; Rouben Paul Adalian, Steven L. Jacobs, Eric Markusen, Samuel Totten, Associate Editors; Marc I. Sherman, Bibliographic Editor; Pauline Cooper, Managing Editor; Forewords by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Simon Wiesenthal; [Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 1999, Two volumes, 720p.]

Alison Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story : Genocide in Rwanda, Human Rights Watch; March 1999

This is the most extensive and authoritative account of the Rwandan genocide yet published. Drawing from Rwandan government documents and other official and unofficial sources, the principal author, Alison Des Forges, and her collaborators, have done a remarkable job pulling together the complex and disparate strands of this story. The full text is available online on the Human Rights Watch website, See : "Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda"

Roy Gutman and Rieff, David editors, Crimes of war: What the public should know, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999). [ For excerpts from the book and updates, see www.crimesofwar.org ]

1992

Helen Fein, ed. Genocide Watch, (New Haven: Yale University Press), 1992.

1990

Frank Chalk, and Kurt Johassohn. The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies ( New Haven: Yale Unversity Press, 1990.

1989

Ervin Staub, The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

1985

Leo Kuper, The Prevention of Genocide. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.

1982

Israel W. Charny,. How Can We Commit the Unthinkable? Genocide, The Human Cancer, in collaboration with Chanan Rapaport ; foreword by Elie Wiesel.(Westview Press, 1982, Paperback by Hearst Books (Wm. Morrow), xvi, 430 p. The book was republished in Portuguese in Rio de Janeiro in 1998 as Anatomio do Genocidio: Uma Psicolo-cia da A-cressdo Humanawith a new Introduction and Bibliography.

Jack Nusan Porter, ed. Genocide and Human Rights: A Global Anthology. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1982.

Leo Kuper, Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981.

1979

Helen Fein, Accounting for Genocide: National Responses and Jewish Victimization during the Holocaust. New York: The Free Press, 1979.

1944

Raphael Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation - Analysis of Goverment - Proposals for Redress, Washington, D.C.:  Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944, 670pp.

Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, published in November 1944, was the first place where the word "genocide" appeared in print.  Raphael Lemkin coined the new word "genocide" in 1943 both as a continuation of his 1933 Madrid proposal and as part of his analysis of German occupation policies in Europe.

French translation:  Le règne de l'Axe en Europe occupée, Le premier paragraphe de Chapitre IX: " Génocide " de Raphaël Lemkin, 1944

Spanish translation:  Las Reglas del Eje sobre la Europa Ocupada, Primer párrafo de Capítulo IX: " Genocide " de Raphael Lemkin, 1944. Translation by Carlos Mario Molina Arrubla, May 2000