A Look at Genocide: Rwanda Book Recommendations is part three in my current series in exploring genocide through book recommendations. Other posts from this series include:

1. General Reference about Genocide Book Recommendations
2. Darfur Book Recommendations

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Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust by Immaculee Ilibagiza

From the publisher: This is my story, told as I remember it … and I remember it as though it happened yesterday. It’s a true story; I use my own name and the names of my family. This is the story of how I discovered God during one of history’s bloodiest holocausts. I wrote this book hoping that others may benefit from my story.—Immaculee Ilibagiza

In the spring of 1994, more than one million people were murdered in the Rwandan genocide. This is the story of how Immaculee survived certain death, along with seven other women, by hiding in a very small bathroom for more than 3 months. Day after day, for months, the killers would search nearby – gleefully chanting “kill them big, kill them small, kill them, kill them, kill them all!”

With uncommon sincerity, Immaculee shares with us her soul’s struggle through disbelief to anger and rage and, ultimately, forgiveness. She is living proof of the power of prayer and positive thinking.

Visit my review including videos of Left to Tell here. This was one of the most important books I’ve read this year. Visit www.lefttotell.com for more information.

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We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch

From the publisher: Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. In April 1994, the Rwandan government called upon everyone in the Hutu majority to kill each member of the Tutsi minority, and over the next three months 800,000 Tutsis perished in the most unambiguous case of genocide since Hitler’s war against the Jews. Philip Gourevitch’s haunting work is an anatomy of the war in Rwanda, a vivid history of the tragedy’s background, and an unforgettable account of its aftermath. One of the most acclaimed books of the year, this account will endure as a chilling document of our time.

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The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide by Gérard Prunier

From the publisher: In the spring of 1994 the tiny African nation of Rwanda exploded onto the international media stage, as internal strife reached genocidal proportions. But the horror that unfolded before our eyes had been building steadily for years before it captured the attention of the world.

In The Rwanda Crisis, journalist and Africa scholar Gérard Prunier provides a historical perspective that Western readers need to understand how and why the brutal massacres of 800,000 Rwandese came to pass. Prunier shows how the events in Rwanda were part of a deadly logic, a plan that served central political and economic interests, rather than a result of ancient tribal hatreds—a notion often invoked by the media to dramatize the fighting.

The Rwanda Crisis makes great strides in dispelling the racist cultural myths surrounding the people of Rwanda, views propogated by European colonialists in the nineteenth century and carved into “history” by Western influence. Prunier demonstrates how the struggle for cultural dominance and subjugation among the Hutu and Tutsi—the central players in the recent massacres—was exploited by racially obsessed Europeans. He shows how Western colonialists helped to construct a Tutsi identity as a superior racial type because of their distinctly “non-Negro” features in order to facilitate greater control over the Rwandese.

Expertly leading readers on a journey through the troubled history of the country and its surroundings, Prunier moves from the pre-colonial Kingdom of Rwanda, though German and Belgian colonial regimes, to the 1973 coup. The book chronicles the developing refugee crisis in Rwanda and neighboring Uganda in the 1970s and 1980s and offers the most comprehensive account available of the manipulations of popular sentiment that led to the genocide and the events that have followed.

In the aftermath of this devastating tragedy, The Rwanda Crisis is the first clear-eyed analysis available to American readers. From the massacres to the subsequent cholera epidemic and emerging refugee crisis, Prunier details the horrifying events of recent years and considers propsects for the future of Rwanda.

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Rwanda and Genocide in the Twentieth Century by Alain Destexhe

From the publisher: The horrific slaughter in Rwanda has once again driven home the deeply rooted existence and continuing presence of genocidal impulses. In this passionately argued volume-first published to great acclaim in France and considerably updated during the translation process-a deeply involved witness of the massacres takes an unflinching look at recent events in Rwanda and what they can tell us about the nature of genocide.

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A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide by Linda Melvern

From the publisher: In Rwanda in 1994 one million people were killed in a planned, public and political campaign. For six years Linda Melvern has worked on the story of this horrendous crime, and this book, a classic piece of investigative journalism, is the result. Its new and startling information has the making of an international scandal.

The book contains a full narrative account of how the genocide unfolded and describes its scale, speed and intensity. And the book provides a terrible indictment, not just of the UN Security Council, but even more so of governments and individuals who could have prevented what was happening but chose not to do so.

Drawing on a series of in-depth interviews, the author also tells the story of the unrecognized heroism of those who stayed on during the genocide – volunteer UN peacekeepers, their Force Commander the Canadian Lt.-General Romeo A. Dallaire, and Philippe Gaillard, the head of a delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross, helped by medical teams from Medecins Sans Frontieres.

The international community, which fifty years ago resolved that genocide never happened again, not only failed to prevent it happening in Rwanda, but, as this book shows, international funds intended to help the Rwandan economy actually helped to create the conditions that made the genocide possible. Documents held in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, as well as hitherto unpublished evidence of secret UN Security Council deliberations in New York, reveal a shocking sequence of events.

What happened in Rwanda shows that despite the creation of an organisation set up to prevent a repetition of genocide – for the UN is central to this task – it failed to do so, even when the evidence was indisputable. At a time when increasing attention is being given to the need for UN reform, this book provides evidence to urgently accelerate and focus that process. Only by understanding how and why the genocide happened can there be any hope that this new century will break with the dismal record of the last.

Linda Melvern’s website.

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Season of Blood: A Rwandan Journey by Fergal Keane

From the publisher: Season of Blood was awarded Britain’s prestigious Orwell Prize for the best political book of 1995. Fergal Keane is the recipient of the 1995 Amnesty International Award for Best International Television Documentary. In 1994 he was named Sony Reporter of the Year at the New York Festival of Radio. When Rwandan president Habyarimana’s jet was shot down in April 1994, the country erupted into a hundred-day orgy of killing which left up to one million dead. Now, following the lines of blood and history, Fergal Keane takes us right along with him on a journey through the holocaust that preempted our television screens. Season of Blood is a veteran Africanist’s deeply personal and elucidating account of ordinary people caught in a nightmare of manipulation and massacre, an encounter with unimaginable evil. Contradicting the popular assumption that the genocide erupted as a result of tribal tensions, Keane demonstrates how a power-hungry clique actually planned the massacres far in advance through a systematic campaign of brainwashing and propaganda delivered with a precision not seen since Nazi Germany. Harrowing, searching, and tender, this overpowering narrative asks profound human questions for which we have no answers.

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The Order of Genocide: Race, Power and War in Rwanda by Scott Straus

From the publisher: The Rwandan genocide has become a touchstone for debates about the causes of mass violence and the responsibilities of the international community. Yet a number of key questions about this tragedy remain unanswered: How did the violence spread from community to community and so rapidly engulf the nation? Why did individuals make decisions that led them to take up machetes against their neighbors? And what was the logic that drove the campaign of extermination?

According to Scott Straus, a social scientist and former journalist in East Africa for several years (who received a Pulitzer Prize nomination for his reporting for the Houston Chronicle), many of the widely held beliefs about the causes and course of genocide in Rwanda are incomplete. They focus largely on the actions of the ruling elite or the inaction of the international community. Considerably less is known about how and why elite decisions became widespread exterminatory violence.

Challenging the prevailing wisdom, Straus provides substantial new evidence about local patterns of violence, using original research—including the most comprehensive surveys yet undertaken among convicted perpetrators—to assess competing theories about the causes and dynamics of the genocide. Current interpretations stress three main causes for the genocide: ethnic identity, ideology, and mass-media indoctrination (in particular the influence of hate radio). Straus’s research does not deny the importance of ethnicity, but he finds that it operated more as a background condition. Instead, Straus emphasizes fear and intra-ethnic intimidation as the primary drivers of the violence. A defensive civil war and the assassination of a president created a feeling of acute insecurity. Rwanda’s unusually effective state was also central, as was the country’s geography and population density, which limited the number of exit options for both victims and perpetrators.

In conclusion, Straus steps back from the particulars of the Rwandan genocide to offer a new, dynamic model for understanding other instances of genocide in recent history—the Holocaust, Armenia, Cambodia, the Balkans—and assessing the future likelihood of such events.

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Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda by Michael Barnett

From the publisher: Why was the UN a bystander during the Rwandan genocide? Do its sins of omission leave it morally responsible for the hundreds of thousands of dead? Michael Barnett, who worked at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations from 1993 to 1994, covered Rwanda for much of the genocide. Based on his first-hand experiences, archival work, and interviews with many key participants, he reconstructs the history of the UN’s involvement in Rwanda.

In the weeks leading up to the genocide, the author documents, the UN was increasingly aware or had good reason to suspect that Rwanda was a site of crimes against humanity. Yet it failed to act. Barnett argues that its indifference was driven not by incompetence or cynicism but rather by reasoned choices cradled by moral considerations. Employing a novel approach to ethics in practice and in relationship to international organizations, Barnett offers an unsettling possibility: the UN culture recast the ethical commitments of well-intentioned individuals, arresting any duty to aid at the outset of the genocide.

Barnett argues that the UN bears some moral responsibility for the genocide. Particularly disturbing is his observation that not only did the UN violate its moral responsibilities, but also that many in New York believed that they were “doing the right thing” as they did so. Barnett addresses the ways in which the Rwandan genocide raises a warning about this age of humanitarianism and concludes by asking whether it is possible to build moral institutions.

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Genocide in Rwanda: A Collective Memory By John A. Berry and Carol Pott Berry

From the publisher: Ten years after one of the world’s most notorious massacres, the people of Rwanda are still seeking answers and justice. How could such a tragedy happen? During the hundred days between early April and mid-July 1994, nearly a million Rwandans were systematically murdered by their own compatriots at the order of their government. Their only crime: being a member of the Tutsi ethnic group. Told in the voices of Rwandans who survived, Genocide in Rwanda: A Collective Memory offers a comprehensive examination of the cyclical violence and culture of impunity that ended in a modern-day catastrophe. The book draws heavily from transcripts of a 1995 conference in Kigali, in which Rwandans spoke out about their experiences and the horrible scenes they had witnessed.

Genocide in Rwanda: A Collective Memory is intended for general readers interested in an analysis of the events in Rwanda, the role of ethnicity and politics in Africa, and the related activities of the United Nations and the international community. It is also for those concerned with human rights and humanitarian actions in general.

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Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak by Jean Hatzfeld

During the spring of 1994, in a tiny country called Rwanda, some 800,000 people were hacked to death, one by one, by their neighbors in a gruesome civil war. Several years later, journalist Jean Hatzfeld traveled to Rwanda to interview ten participants in the killings, eliciting extraordinary testimony from these men about the genocide they perpetrated. As Susan Sontag wrote in the preface,Machete Season is a document that “everyone should read . . . [because making] the effort to understand what happened in Rwanda . . . is part of being a moral adult.”

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Life Laid Bare: The Survivors in Rwanda Speak by Jean Hatzfeld

From the publisher: In the late 1990s, French author and journalist Jean Hatzfeld made several journeys into the hilly, marshy region of the Bugesera, one of the areas most devastated by the Rwandan genocide of April 1994, where an average of five out of six Tutsis were hacked to death with machete and spear by their Hutu neighbors and militiamen. In the villages of Nyamata and N’tarama, Hatzfeld interviewed fourteen survivors of the genocide, from orphan teenage farmers to the local social worker. For years the survivors had lived in a muteness as enigmatic as the silence of those who survived the Nazi concentration camps. In Life Laid Bare, they speak for those who are no longer alive to speak for themselves; they tell of the deaths of family and friends in the churches and marshes to which they fled, and they attempt to account for the reasons behind the Tutsi extermination. For many of the survivors “life has broken down,” while for others, it has “stopped,” and still others say that it “absolutely must go on.”

These horrific accounts of life at the very edge contrast with Hatzfeld’s own sensitive and vivid descriptions of Rwanda’s villages and countryside in peacetime. These voices of courage and resilience exemplify the indomitable human spirit, and they remind us of our own moral responsibility to bear witness to these atrocities and to never forget what can come to pass again. Winner of the Prix France Culture and the Prix Pierre Mille, Life Laid Bare allows us, in the author’s own words, “to draw as close as we can get to the Rwandan genocide.”

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Genocide in Rwanda: Complicity of the Churches By Carol Rittner, John K. Roth, Wendy Whitworth

From the publisher: In 1994, genocide put Rwanda on the map for most of the world. It also exposed one of the most shameful scandals of the Rwandan churches—the complicity of the Christian churches in the genocide. These are strong words to use when speaking about an institution committed to preaching and practicing Jesus’ “two great commandments”—Thou shalt love the Lord your God with your whole heart and mind, and thou shalt love your neighbor as yourself—and yet, they need to be said. Why? Because Rwanda is the most Christian country in Africa. More than 90% of its people are baptized Christians, with the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches having the greatest number of adherents (65% and 20% respectively).

According to Hugh McCullum, a journalist who has written about the 1994 genocide, “The genocide shook the very foundation of the churches: none remained without blood on its hands.”

According to Archbishop Desmond, “The story of Rwanda shows both sides of our humanity. The churches were sometimes quite superb in what they did in the face of intimidation and at great cost to themselves. But there were other times when [they] failed dismally and seemed to be implicated in ways that have left many disillusioned, disgruntled and angry with the churches and their leadership, Many have been alienated and feel badly betrayed.”

What is it that happened in Rwanda between April and July 1994 that has left so many Rwandans “disillusioned, disgruntled and angry with the churches and their leadership”?

Genocide in Rwanda: Complicity of the Churches provides a variety of perspectives through which to assess the complex questions and issues surrounding the topic, and, even raise some new questions that could provide some new insight into this historical event. Contributors have tried to face as carefully, sensitively, and honestly as possible some of the questions about the Church and 1994 genocide in Rwanda many have been asking in the media, and in other places as well. For example, Why were priests ethno-biased? Why did the churches allow clerics to preach ethno-hatred? Did they? What about the nuns and priests who assisted in the killing of Tutsis? Did the Roman Catholic Church, the Pope or the Vatican or did the Church of England — the two Christian denominations with the largest number of adherents — speak out against them? Did the Church protect, reprimand, punish, excommunicate their adherents — clergy, religious, and lay — who were genocidaires before, during, and after the 1994 genocide? Were leaders in the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches, at the highest levels, active or passive? informed or ignorant about what was happening in Rwanda in 1994? Did God have any witnesses during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda? Has anything changed? Do the Churches have a moral duty to engage in tikkun olam, healing and repair? If so, how? If not, why not?

These, are only some of the questions and they are questions we must ask for the sake of the future. Otherwise, how can the Church, its members and its leadership, begin to make moral restitution, begin to change structures and behaviors, and once again reveal the human face of God in our fragile world?

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One Hundred Days of Silence: America and the Rwanda Genocide by Jared A. Cohen

From the publisher: One Hundred Days of Silence is an important investigation into the 1994 Rwandan genocide and American foreign policy. During one hundred days of spring, eight-hundred thousand Rwandan Tutsis and sympathetic Hutus were slaughtered in one of the most atrocious events of the twentieth century. Drawing on declassified documents and testimony of policy makers, Jared Cohen critically reconstructs the historical account of tacit policy that led to nonintervention. His analysis examines the questions of what the United States knew about the genocide and how the world’s most powerful nation turned a blind eye. The study reveals the ease at which an administration can not only fail to intervene but also silence discussion of the crisis. The book argues that despite the extent of the genocide the American government was not motivated to act due to a lack of economic interest. With precision and passion, One Hundred Days of Silence frames the debate surrounding this controversial history.

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The Media and the Rwanda Genocide by Allan Thompson

The news media played a crucial role in the 1994 Rwanda genocide: local media fueled the killings, while the international media either ignored or seriously misconstrued what was happening.

This is the first book to explore both sides of that media equation. The book examines how local radio and print media were used as a tool of hate by encouraging neighbors to turn against each other. It also presents a critique of international media coverage of the cataclysmic events in Rwanda. Bringing together local reporters and commentators from Rwanda, high-profile Western journalists and leading media theorists, this is the only book to identify and probe the extent of the media’s accountability. It also examines deliberations by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on the role of the media in the genocide.

This book is a startling record of the dangerous negative influence that the media can have, when used as a political tool or when news organizations and journalists fail to live up to their responsibilities. The authors put forward suggestions for the future by outlining how we can avoid censorship and propaganda, and by arguing for a new responsibility in media reporting.

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This Voice in My Heart: A Genocide Survivor’s Story of Escape, Faith, and Forgiveness by Gilbert Tuhabonye and Gary Brozek

From the publisher: “With nowhere to run, I burrowed my way underneath a smoking mound of bodies.” Gilbert Tuhabonye is a survivor. More than ten years ago the centuries-old battle between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes of Africa came to his school. Fueled by hatred, the Hutus forced more than a hundred Tutsi children and teachers into a small room and used machetes to slash most of them to death. The unfortunate ones who survived were doused with gasoline and set on fire. After hiding under a heap of his smoldering classmates for more than eight hours, Gilbert heard a voice saying, “You will be all right; you will survive.” He knew it was God speaking to him. Gilbert was the lone survivor of the attack at his school, and thanks his enduring faith in God for his survival.

Today, Gilbert is a world-class athlete, running coach, and celebrity in his new hometown of Austin, Texas. The road to this point has been a tough one, but he uses his survival instincts to spur him on to the goal of qualifying for the 2008 Olympic summer games. This Voice in My Heart portrays not only the horrific event, but the transformative power of real forgiveness and the gift of faith in God. This riveting story will touch you from its first page and offer inspiration for years to come.

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The Bishop of Rwanda by John Rucyahana

From the publisher: In 1994, as his country descended into the madness of genocide, Anglican Bishop John Rucyahana underwent the mind-numbing pain of having members of his church and family butchered. John refused to become a part of the systemic hatred. He founded the Sonrise orphanage and school for children orphaned in the genocide, and he now leads reconciliation efforts between his own Tutsi people, the victims of this horrific massacre, and the perpetrators, the Hutus. His remarkable story is one that demands to be told.

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An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography by Paul Rusesabagina and Tom Zoellner

From the publisher: The remarkable life story of the man who inspired the film Hotel Rwanda

Readers who were moved and horrified by Hotel Rwanda will respond even more intensely to Paul Rusesabagina’s unforgettable autobiography. As Rwanda was thrown into chaos during the 1994 genocide, Rusesabagina, a hotel manager, turned the luxurious Hotel Milles Collines into a refuge for more than 1,200 Tutsi and moderate Hutu refugees, while fending off their would-be killers with a combination of diplomacy and deception. In An Ordinary Man, he tells the story of his childhood, retraces his accidental path to heroism, revisits the 100 days in which he was the only thing standing between his “guests” and a hideous death, and recounts his subsequent life as a refugee and activist.

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Rwanda Means the Universe: A Native’s Memoir of Blood and Bloodlines by Louise Mushikiwabo and Jack Kramer

From the publisher: Mushikiwabo is a Rwandan working as a translator in Washington when she learns that most of her family back home has been killed in a conspiracy meticulously planned by the state. First comes shock, then aftershock, three months of it, during which her worst fears are confirmed: The same state apparatus has duped millions of Rwandans into butchering nearly a million of their neighbors.

Years earlier, her brother Lando wrote her a letter she never got until now. Urged on by it, she rummages into their farm childhood, and into family corners alternately dark, loving, and humorous. She searches for stray mementos of the lost, then for their roots. What she finds is that and more—hints, roots, of the 1994 crime that killed her family. Her narrative takes the reader on a journey from the days the world and Rwanda discovered each other back to colonial period when pseudoscientific ideas about race put the nation on a highway bound for the 1994 genocide.

Seven years of full-time collaboration by two writers—and the faith of family and friends—went into this emotionally charged work. Rwanda Means the Universe is at once a celebration of the lives of the lost and homage to their past, but it’s no comfortable tribute. It’s an expression of dogged hope in the face of modern evil.

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Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda by Roméo Dallaire and Samantha Power

From the publisher: For the first time in the United States comes the tragic and profoundly important story of the legendary Canadian general who “watched as the devil took control of paradise on earth and fed on the blood of the people we were supposed to protect.” When Roméo Dallaire was called on to serve as force commander of the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda, he believed that his assignment was to help two warring parties achieve the peace they both wanted. Instead, he was exposed to the most barbarous and chaotic display of civil war and genocide in the past decade, observing in just one hundred days the killings of more than eight hundred thousand Rwandans. With only a few troops, his own ingenuity and courage to direct his efforts, Dallaire rescued thousands, but his call for more support from the world body fell on deaf ears. In Shake Hands with the Devil, General Dallaire recreates the awful history the world community chose to ignore. He also chronicles his own progression from confident Cold Warrior to devastated UN commander, and finally to retired general struggling painfully, and publicly, to overcome posttraumatic stress disorder—the highest-ranking officer ever to share such experiences with readers.

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Deogratias, a Tale of Rwanda by J. P. Stassen and Alexis Siegel

From the publisher: The 2000 winner of the Goscinny Prize for outstanding graphic novel script, this is the harrowing tale of the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, as seen through the eyes of a boy named Deogratias. He is an ordinary teenager, in love with a girl named Bénigne, but Deogratias is a Hutu and Bénigne is a Tutsi who dies in the genocide, and Deogratias himself plays a part in her death. As the story circles around but never depicts the terror and brutality of an entire country descending into violence, we watch Deogratias in his pursuit of Bénigne, and we see his grief and descent into madness following her death, as he comes to believe he is a dog.

Told with great artistry and intelligence, this book offers a window into a dark chapter of recent human history and exposes the West’s role in the tragedy. Stassen’s interweaving of the aftermath of the genocide and the events leading up to it heightens the impact of the horror, giving powerful expression to the unspeakable, indescribable experience of ordinary Hutus caught up in the violence. Difficult, beautiful, honest, and heartbreaking, this is a major work by a masterful artist.

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Hotel Rwanda (DVD 2005)

From Amazon:: Once you find out what happened in Rwanda you’ll never forget. Oscar® nominee Don Cheadle (Traffic) gives “the performance of his career in this extraordinarily powerful” (The Hollywood Reporter) and moving true story of one man’s brave stance against savagery during the 1994 Rwandan conflict. Sophie Okonedo (Dirty Pretty Things) co-stars as the loving wife who challenges a good man to become a great man.As his country descends into madness five-star-hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina (Cheadle) sets out to save his family. But when he sees that the world will not intervene in the massacre of minority Tutsis he finds the courage to open his hotel to more than 1200 refugees. Now with a rabid militia at the gates he must use his well-honed grace flattery and cunning to protect his guests from certain death.

I love this movie. Very touching.

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Frontline: Ghosts of Rwanda (DVD 2004)

From Amazon: Frontline marks the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide with a documentary chronicling one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century. In addition to interviews with key government officials and diplomats, the two-hour documentary offers eyewitness accounts of the genocide from those who experienced it firsthand. Frontline illustrates the failures that enabled the slaughter of 800,000 people to occur unchallenged by the global community.

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Sometimes in April (DVD 2005)

In April 1994 one of the most heinous genocides in world history began in the African nation of Rwanda. Over the course of 100 days an estimated 800000 people were killed in a terrifying purge by Hutu nationalists against their Tutsi countrymen. This harrowing HBO Films drama focuses on the almost indescribable human atrocities that took place a decade ago through the story of two Hutu brothers–one in the military one a radio personality–whose relationship and private lives were forever changed in the midst of the genocide. Written and directed by Raoul Peck (HBO Films’ Lumumba) the movie is the first large-scale film about the 100 days of the 1994 Rwandan genocide to be shot in Rwanda in the locations where the real-life events transpired.

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The Diary of Immaculee (DVD 2006)

From Amazon: Immaculaee Ilibagiza grew up in a country she loved, surrounded by a family she cherished. But in 1994 her idyllic world was ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide. Her family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans. Miraculously, Immaculaee survived the slaughter. For 91 days, she and seven other women huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor’s home while hundreds of machete-wielding killers hunted for them. . . .

Now, the award-winning and three-time Academy Award-nominated documentary film producer Steve Kalafer (More, Curtain Call, Bottom of the Ninth, Price of Freedom, Going Home, and Sister Rose’s Passion) brings together the same creative and production team for their most challenging and powerful cinematic journey. The Diary of Immaculaee reveals the horrific, yet inspiring story of a remarkable woman’s experiences in the midst of one of history’s most tragic events. Immaculaee Ilibagiza, and others who were there, will tell you what happened . . . and you shall never forget it.

With powerful and emotional on-camera appearances from the good Samaritans who kept Immaculaee alive in Rwanda, to inspirational personalities such as Dr. Wayne W. Dyer and Carl Wilkens, this amazing story of a journey through the darkness of holocaust will touch your heart and soul. This is a documentary that will take you to a place where horror and hope and hatred and love lived side by side, clasping hands and breathing the same air. With unwavering faith and courage, one young woman faced the threat of unspeakable acts; endured incomparable despair; and quietly, graciously, and bravely came through the living hell of holocaust searching for safety, peace, and an everlasting Heaven.

The Diary of Immaculaee is a film that abounds with drama and compassion . . . and makes us all realize that heroes and heroines will always walk among us.

Visit my review including videos of Left to Tell here.

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Rwanda: Do Scars Ever Fade? (DVD – 2004)

From Amazon: This incisive look at the genocide and its aftermath raises new questions about how we can keep such tragedies from recurring.

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Beyond the Gates (DVD 2005)

From Amazon: Based on true events during the Rwandan genocide in 1994 an exhausted Catholic priest (John Hurt) and a young idealistic English teacher (Hugh Dancy) find themselves caught in a literal and spiritual crisis. They have to choose whether to stay with the thousands of Tutsis about to be massacred or to flee for safety.

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Visit Rwanda: The Wake of a Genocide as a jumping point for more information. You may purchase any of these titles through the Maw Books Amazon store.

Books that caught my eye and I’d like to read are We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch, Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak by Jean Hatzfeld , Life Laid Bare: The Survivors in Rwanda Speak by Jean Hatzfeld, An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography by Paul Rusesabagina and Tom Zoellnerand I’d like to watch Sometimes in April.

Why? Because this is going on right now!

And it’s a topic that utterly fascinates me. I’ve come up with a list of book recommendations to help me (and perhaps you) to help shed me of my ignorance. And then I can help to do my part in my little corner of the world. Some are memoirs, some are essays, some are photography books, and I’ve also included some documentaries as well.

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The Translator: A Tribesman’s Memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari
From the publisher: The young life of Daoud Hari—his friends call him David—has been one of bravery and mesmerizing adventure. He is a living witness to the brutal genocide under way in Darfur.

The Translator is a suspenseful, harrowing, and deeply moving memoir of how one person has made a difference in the world–an on-the-ground account of one of the biggest stories of our time. Using his high school knowledge of languages as his weapon—while others around him were taking up arms—Daoud Hari has helped inform the world about Darfur.

Hari, a Zaghawa tribesman, grew up in a village in the Darfur region of Sudan. In 2003, this traditional life was shattered when helicopter gunships appeared over Darfur’s villages, followed by Sudanese-government-backed militia groups raping and murdering citizens and burning villages.

Though Hari’s village was attacked and destroyed, he was able to escape and lead survivors to safety. When international aid groups and reporters arrived, Hari offered his services as a translator and guide. He risked his life again and again, for the government of Sudan had outlawed journalists in the region, and death was the punishment for those who aided the “foreign spies.” And then, inevitably, his luck ran out and he was captured. . . .

The Translator tells the remarkable story of a man who came face-to-face with genocide– time and again risking his own life to fight injustice and save his people.

For more information visit the book’s website here.
I’ve reviewed this book here.

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Not On Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond by Don Cheadle

From the publisher: While Don Cheadle was filming Hotel Rwanda, a new crisis had already erupted in Darfur, in nearby Sudan. In September 2004, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell termed the atrocities being committed there “genocide” — and yet two years later things have only gotten worse. 3.5 million Sudanese are going hungry, 2.5 million have been displaced by violence, and 400,000 have died in Darfur to date.

Both shocked and energized by this ongoing tragedy, Cheadle teamed up with leading activist John Prendergast to focus the world’s attention. Not on Our Watch, their empowering book, offers six strategies readers themselves can implement: Raise Awareness, Raise Funds, Write a Letter, Call for Divestment, Start an Organization, and Lobby the Government. Each of these small actions can make a huge difference in the fate of a nation, and a people — not only in Darfur, but in other crisis zones such as Somalia, Congo, and northern Uganda.

For more information visit www.notonourwatchbook.com

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Darfur: Twenty Years of War and Genocide in Sudan by Leora Kahn

Synopsis from Amazon: Winner of the 2007 Lucie Award: Power House Books for Photography Book Publisher of the Year
In June 2007, Power House Books released Darfur: Twenty Years of War and Genocide in Sudan, a collaboration with three humanitarian organizations and five of the world’s top photo agencies. The book, filled with haunting images and testimonials that displayed the desperate and severe reality of the Sudan crisis, sold out its initial run in just a few months, helping to raise much-needed money for this desperate cause. Now, Darfur arrives in paperback.

Even by conservative estimates, the situation in the Darfur region of Sudan is grave. There are 3.5 million people who are hungry, 2.5 million who have been displaced by violence, and 400,000 individuals who have died since the crisis began in 2003. The international community has failed to take steps to protect civilians, or to influence the Sudanese government to intervene.

Darfur: Twenty Years of War and Genocide in Sudan is the product of a close partnership between Amnesty International USA, Proof: Media for Social Justice, and the Holocaust Museum Houston. Featuring the work of eight prominent photographers, the book covers three periods in the Sudan crisis, including images shot in 1988, when an estimated 250,000 Sudanese died of starvation; images from 1992 and 1995 that capture the atrocities of a civil war, when hundreds of thousands fled their homes to other destinations in Sudan or left the country altogether; and images from 2005 and more recently, bringing to light the severity of the humanitarian crisis underway, with the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed militias committing systematic violence on the people of Darfur.

The book includes website links and additional resources for readers to utilize in seeking an urgent, immediate, and international call to action and to raise awareness of this human suffering. ALL PROCEEDS FROM THE BOOK WILL BENEFIT AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA AND GENOCIDE INTERVENTION NETWORK.

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Darfur: A New History of a Long War by Julie Flint & Alex de Waai

From the publisher: Written by two authors with unparalleled first-hand experience of Darfur, this is the definitive guide. Newly updated and hugely expanded, this edition details Darfur’s history in Sudan. It traces the origins, organization and ideology of the infamous Janjawiid and rebel groups, including the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement. It also analyses the brutal response of the Sudanese government. The authors investigate the responses by the African Union and the international community, including the halting peace talks and the attempts at peacekeeping. Flint and de Waal provide an authoritative and compelling account of contemporary Africa’s most controversial conflict.

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Darfur Darfur by Leslie Thomas (editor)

From Amazon: DARFUR/DARFUR: LIFE/WAR is a powerful collection of images from some of the world’s most celebrated photojournalists who have documented an ongoing genocide that has claimed more than 300,000 lives and has displaced about 2.5 million people.

Launched in September 2006, Darfur/Darfur, the exhibit to which the book is the companion, consists of over 150 color and black-and-white images by seven international photojournalists and one former U.S. Marine and has gained massive national and international attention. It has been shown in museums such as the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, the Eastman House, Rochester, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., and the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Future venues include the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, and FORMA, Milan. In January 2007, Darfur/Darfur became the first exhibit on the crisis to be presented on the African continent.

Visit www.darfurdarfur.org for more about the exhibit tour dates and the book.

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Darfur: African Genocide (In the News) by John Xavier

From the publisher: Both timely and enduring, this book explores the current and continuing Darfur conflict and provides the historical context. While explaining the background behind this violent conflict and the various causes that have contributed to it, it explores geography, environmental hardship, religion, national and regional politics and government, and the development of rebel resistance groups. It also describes the international reaction to the violence, and talks about what the future might hold. (For young adults)

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Darfur by Paolo Pellegrin

From the publisher: An unnatural disaster is devastating the Darfur region of Sudan, where civilians are fleeing in terror from government-supported mass killings. Thousands are dead and millions have been forced from their homes. Millions more are at risk. In 2005, Human Rights Watch investigators began giving children paper and crayons to keep them occupied while they gathered testimony from the children’s parents. Without any instruction, the children drew harrowing and heartbreaking accounts of what they had witnessed: brutal attacks by government-sponsored militias known as Janjaweed, indiscriminate aerial bombings by Sudanese government forces, shootings, burning of entire villages and flight to Chad.

Photographer Paolo Pellegrin traveled to Sudan first in 2005, and again in 2007, to expose the consequences of the ongoing human rights crimes fueling this catastrophe.

Now, Human Rights Watch combines these graphic accounts in Darfur: Smallest Witnesses, featuring an introduction by Nicholas Kristof and first-hand accounts and essays by Human Rights Watch investigators.

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Darfur Diaries: Stories of Survival by Jen Marlowe and Aisha Bain and Adam Shapiro

From the publisher: In November 2004, three independent filmmakers traveled to eastern Chad and crept across the border into Darfur. Improvising as they went, they spoke with dozens of Darfurians, learning about their history, hopes, and fears, and the resilience and tragedy of their everyday lives.

In February of 2003 following years of oppression, the Sudan Liberation Army in Darfur took up arms against the Sudanese government. The response to the rebellion was a brutal campaign by the government and allied militias of mass murder, rape and the wholesale destruction of villages and livelihood. Millions of people were displaced, and hundreds of thousands killed.

This book introduces us to those who remain: the refugees and displaced people, civilians and fighters resisting the Sudanese government, teachers, students, parents, children and community leaders, whose collective testimonies provide the heart of Darfur Diaries. Their stories, interwoven with the filmmakers’ own personal narratives and conveyed with political and historical context, provide a much-needed account to help understand the tragic situation in Darfur.

Visit www.darfurdiaries.org

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Educating Darfur Refugees: A Jesuit’s Efforts in Chad by Patrick Samway

From Amazon: As a result of the genocide in Darfur, tens of thousands of people have been forced to flee Sudan and seek refuge in overcrowded, desolate desert camps along the Chadian border. Educating Darfur Refugees is the unforgettable journal of a Jesuit priest who spent nine months in 2004 and 2005 working in three of those refugee camps. Samway’s diaries, deeply informed by his perspective as a religious scholar but as engrossing as any page-turner, are an unflinching eyewitness account of one of the greatest tragedies of our time.

Charged with the considerable task of setting up schools for refugee children, Samway recounts his experiences with scarce food and water, nonexistent educational resources, and the remarkable people he encounters along the way. The life-changing story that unfolds, an engaged personal narrative capacious enough to embrace both George Bernanos and Walker Percy, is necessary reading for anyone concerned about Sudanese refugees and those who share their plight all over the world.

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War in Darfur and the Search for Peace by Alex De Waal (editor)

From the publisher: Since 2003, the Darfur region of Sudan has been the locus of a hideous war that has aroused the outrageof milions of ordinary people across the world. But despite a high level of media coverage and activist mobilization, Darfur’s society and politics remain poorly understood. War in Darfur and the Search for Peace brings together essays by noted Sudanese scholars and international experts on Darfur, containing much new historical and contemporary research.

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The Devil Came on Horseback: Bearing Witness to the Genocide in Darfur by Brian Steidle

From the publisher: Former United States Marine Brian Steidle served for six months in Darfur as an unarmed military observer for the African Union. There he witnessed first-hand the ongoing genocide, and documented every day of his experience using email, audio journals, notebook after notebook and nearly 1,000 photographs. Gretchen Steidle Wallace, his sister, who wrote this book with Brian, corresponded with him throughout his time in Darfur. Fired upon, taken hostage, a witness to villages destroyed and people killed, frustrated by his mission’s limitations and the international community’s reluctance to intervene, Steidle resigned and has since become an advocate for the world to step in and stop this genocide. The Devil Came on Horseback depicts the tragic impact of an Arab government bent on destroying its black African citizens, the maddening complexity of international inaction in response to blatant genocide, and the awkward, yet heroic transformation of a formerMarine turned humanitarian. It is a gripping and moving memoir that bears witness to atrocities we have too long averted our eyes from, and reveals that the actions of just one committed person have the power to change the world.

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Darfur’s Sorrow: A History of Destruction and Genocide by M W Daly

From the publisher: Darfur is a region set apart, huge, remote and poverty stricken. Its people are today locked in conflict, terrorized by the lawless Arab militia known as janjawid. As M.W. Daly explains, the roots of the crisis lie deep in Darfur’s past. Tracing the story from the origins of the Fur state in the seventeenth century to Darfur’s annexation by the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, he shows how years of neglect left the region unprepared for independence. This complex story is told with compassion, insight and a strong sense of place.

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The Sudan Project: Rebuilding with the People of Darfur-A Young Person’s Guide by Melissa Leembruggen

From the publisher: The Sudan Project helps make children aware of the devastating effects of poverty and war in Sudan, as well as the suffering of Darfur’s people. As current as today’s headlines, this significant work seeks to stir the conscience of an awakening America. The book focuses on the plight of the people of Darfur and encourages hope that they can flourish through the help readers can provide. Such organizations as the United Nations and UMCOR are working to provide relief to this forgotten region. For ages 9–12.

Based on the experiences of The Sudan Project mission by Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church in Tipp City, OH, The Sudan Project has raised over $1.6 million for Darfur relief since 2004. A portion of the proceeds from this book go to help the people of Sudan through The Sudan Project. For more information, visit The Sudan Project.

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Tears of the Desert: A Memoir of Survival in Darfur by Halima Bashir

Available September 2008.

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A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide by Eric Reeves

From the publisher: The main theme of this new book is that the Khartoum regime is committing genocide in Darfur while the international community watches in silence or with mere hand-wringing.

Publication of such an important book, at this critical moment in the Darfur genocide, offers to government officials, academics, humanitarian aid groups, human rights organizations, as well as to the broader public an in-depth critical assessment of the current situation in Darfur. It also provides an unsparing assessment of the international community’s diplomatic efforts, past and present, to respond to Darfur. Such an assessment comes at a defining moment. The world is watching clearly and yet responding weakly. Action is essential now if we are not to see a further extension of the international failures so conspicuous in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

Visit www.sudanreeves.org

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Heart of Darfur by Lisa Blaker

From the publisher: Lisa arrives in Sudan full of determination to use her skills as a nurse to do something to ease the plight of the hundreds of thousands of people caught up in the civil war raging through Darfur.

She is working with Medecins Sans Frontieres, the international organization that sends health workers to the most desperate places in the world. The nine months she spends on the mission will be the toughest of her life but will teach her some fundamental truths about what people are capable of, both good and bad, and about herself.

Lisa describes treating children with horrific wounds, babies dying of dehydration, girls giving birth at the age of 13 and old women too traumatized to carry on living. Her relationships with her Sudanese colleagues are treasured and described in fascinating detail. The book is exquisitely written, without sentiment but with a powerful and moving determination to show the suffering of the people of Darfur and to bear witness to their remarkable courage in the face of the most appalling situation.

This is the book to help us all understand the human story behind the newspaper headlines.

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Darfur Now (DVD – 2008)
Making a difference. Now. This acclaimed inspiring documentary follows six people who are striving to end the suffering in Sudan’s war-ravaged Darfur. The six American activists, an international prosecutor, a Sudanese rebel, a sheikh a leader of the World Food Program and Don Cheadle who traverses the globe with fellow actor George Clooney to pressure world leaders demonstrate the power of one individual to make extraordinary changes. Be an eyewitness to the tragedy and the triumphs the fear and the pride. Meet the refugees determined to return to their beloved homeland. And discover how you too can make a difference.

Official trailer:

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Darfur Diaries: Message From Home (DVD – 2006)

From Amazon: This is a brutally honest look into the current tragedy befalling the Darfur region. A team of three independent filmmakers in Darfur monitored the worsening political and humanitarian crisis in 2004 and recognized that the mainstream media offered marginal and inadequate coverage. They set out with the goal of providing a platform for the people of Darfur to speak for themselves about their experiences their fears and their hopes for the future

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Sand and Sorrow (DVD – 2008)

From Amazon: This 94-minute documentary details the historical events that have given rise to an Arab-dominated governments willingness to kill and displace its own indigenous African people while examining the international communitys ?legacy of failure? to respond to such profound crimes against humanity both now and in the past. Offered exclusive and unparalleled access to the situation on the ground inside Darfur Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Paul Freedman joins a contingent of African Union peacekeeping forces in Darfur while a tragic and disturbing chapter in human history unfolds. As we see while the heroic men and women of this undermanned under-funded mission brave harsh conditions and unfettered violence as many as 2.5 million displaced persons have no choice but to settle inside squalid camps in Darfur and neighboring Chad to wait and hope for a resolution that may be years away.

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A Journey to Darfur (DVD – 2007)

A short twenty minute video as actor George Clooney and his father travel to Darfur to shed light on the current genocide.

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The Devil Came On Horseback (DVD 2007)

An up-close honest and uncompromising look at the crisis in Darfur THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK exposes the ongoing tragedy in Sudan as seen through the eyes of one American witness.Using the exclusive photographs and first hand testimony of former U.S. Marine Captain Brian Steidle the film goes on an emotionally charged journey into the heart of Darfur Sudan where in 2004 Steidle became witness to a genocide that to-date has claimed over 400000 lives. As an official military observer Steidle had access to parts of the country that no journalist could penetrate. Unprepared for what he would witness and experience Steidle returned to the U.S. armed with his photographs intent on exposing the images and stories of lives systematically destroyed.A 2007 world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this astonishingly propulsive and dramatic film from award-winning filmmakers Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern (The Trials of Darryl Hunt) is a heartfelt account of what this particular American witness saw and just as important what he did afterward

Official trailer:

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ABC News Nightline The Sudan (DVD – 2007)

From Amazon: ABC News correspondent David Wright and his team traveled the length of Darfur, which is the size of Texas in a country that is the largest in Africa. At least 200 people a day are dying in the refugee camps of Darfur, and yet the refugees keep on coming. And while the relief organizations are doing all they can to help them – many parts of Darfur simply cannot be served because the conflict is raging and those areas cannot be safely reached. Nightline examines the crisis that has been identified, by many as nothing short of genocide and explains the political, strategic and logistical obstacles that stand in the way of solving this man-made disaster.

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For more information about what you can do to help those in Darfur, visit www.savedarfur.org

I don’t know about you but I’m committing to read Darfur Diaries: Stories of Survival by Jen Marlowe and Aisha Bain and Adam Shapiro, Not On Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond by Don Cheadle and watching Sand and Sorrow. It’s a start. I did not cover books about the Lost Boys, those afflicted by war in the southern region of Sudan. I intend to cover this at a different time.

I’ll be suggesting book recommendations for a different genocide each Monday as part of a 8-10 weeks series. Read part one here for book recommendations about genocide in general.

Don’t you just hate that word?

Don’t you feel the weight of the world on your shoulders when you sound that word out?

It makes me shudder.

I’ve really been thinking about this a lot lately. I’ve been preparing a post about book recommendations to learn more about Darfur and I realized that I would like to make a series out of this topic.

Morbid, I know.

But this is the type of history (as well as current events) that for some unfathomable reason I am completely fascinated by. So for the next 10-12 weeks I will be posting once a week on book recommendations for a particular genocide. I’ll be working my way backwards. I’ll be covering the following conflicts: Darfur, Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia, Nazi Holocaust, Rape of Naking, Stalin’s forced famine in Ukraine, and the Armenian’s in Turkey. I was trying to list the major ones, but I’m sure that I’m missing quite a few, so let me know of one that I didn’t catch and I’ll add it in.

And at the end of this 8-10 weeks, I will be completely depressed and pulling you down with me. But I’ll have a good book list for myself.

In the meantime, I thought I would get started with some book recommendations about genocide in general. This list is by no means exhaustive.

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Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur by Ben Kiernan

For thirty years Ben Kiernan has been deeply involved in the study of genocide and crimes against humanity. He has played a key role in unearthing confidential documentation of the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge. His writings have transformed our understanding not only of twentieth-century Cambodia but also of the historical phenomenon of genocide. This new book—the first global history of genocide and extermination from ancient times—is among his most important achievements.

Kiernan examines outbreaks of mass violence from the classical era to the present, focusing on worldwide colonial exterminations and twentieth-century case studies including the Armenian genocide, the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin’s mass murders, and the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides. He identifies connections, patterns, and features that in nearly every case gave early warning of the catastrophe to come: racism or religious prejudice, territorial expansionism, and cults of antiquity and agrarianism. The ideologies that have motivated perpetrators of mass killings in the past persist in our new century, says Kiernan. He urges that we heed the rich historical evidence with its telltale signs for predicting and preventing future genocides.

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Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction by Adam Jones

From the publisher: An invaluable introduction to the subject of genocide, explaining its history from pre-modern times to the present day, with a wide variety of case studies.

Recent events in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, East Timor and Iraq have demonstrated with appalling clarity that the threat of genocide is still a major issue within world politics. The book examines the differing interpretations of genocide from psychology, sociology, anthropology and political science and analyzes the influence of race, ethnicity, nationalism and gender on genocides. In the final section, the author examines how we punish those responsible for waging genocide and how the international community can prevent further bloodshed.

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A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Powers

From the publisher: In her award-winning interrogation of the last century of American history, Samantha Power—a former Balkan war correspondent and founding executive director of Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy—asks the haunting question: Why do American leaders who vow “never again” repeatedly fail to stop genocide? Drawing upon exclusive interviews with Washington’s top policy makers, access to newly declassified documents, and her own reporting from the modern killing fields, Power provides the answer in “A Problem from Hell,” a groundbreaking work that tells the stories of the courageous Americans who risked their careers and lives in an effort to get the United States to act.

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Genocide by Jane Springer

From the publisher: Some view the systematic killing, rape, and destruction of homes in Darfur as a grave humanitarian crisis. For others, it’s a clear example of the ultimate crime against humanity — genocide. Who is right? What is genocide? Who are the endangered human beings in today’s world? What is the impact on humanity of wiping out entire groups of people? This thoughtful book helps young readers understand these and other difficult questions. Providing an overview of the history of genocide worldwide, the book explores the paradox that while a person who murders another person can be tried and even executed for the crime, a person who murders hundreds or thousands of people usually goes free. Using case studies of acts of genocide throughout history, the book points out the unique character of each while at the same time establishing important links between them. Most importantly, the book answers the question, What can be done to prevent genocide from happening in the future? Categorized as Young Adult.

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The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective by Robert Gellately (editor)

From the publisher: Focusing on the twentieth century, this collection of essays by leading international experts offers an up-to-date, comprehensive history and analysis of multiple cases of genocide and genocidal acts. The book contains studies of the Armenian genocide; the victims of Stalinist terror; the Holocaust; and Imperial Japan. Contributors explore colonialism and address the fate of the indigenous peoples in Africa, North America, and Australia. In addition, extensive coverage of the post-1945 period includes the atrocities in the former Yugoslavia, Bali, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Rwanda, East Timor, and Guatemala.

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A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present by Ward Churchill

From the publisher: Ward Churchill has achieved an unparalleled reputation as a scholar-activist and analyst of indigenous issues in North America. Here, he explores the history of holocaust and denial in this hemisphere, beginning with the arrival of Columbus and continuing on into the present.

He frames the matter by examining both “revisionist” denial of the nazi-perpatrated Holocaust and the opposing claim of its exclusive “uniqueness,” using the full scope of what happened in Europe as a backdrop against which to demonstrate that genocide is precisely what has been-and still is-carried out against the American Indians.

Churchill lays bare the means by which many of these realities have remained hidden, how public understanding of this most monstrous of crimes has been subverted not only by its perpetrators and their beneficiaries but by the institutions and individuals who perceive advantages in the confusion. In particular, he outlines the reasons underlying the United States’s 40-year refusal to ratify the Genocide Convention, as well as the implications of the attempt to exempt itself from compliance when it finally offered its “endorsement.”
In conclusion, Churchill proposes a more adequate and coherent definition of the crime as a basis for identifying, punishing, and preventing genocidal practices, wherever and whenever they occur.

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Genocide by W. D. Rubinstein

Synopsis: Genocide is the grimmest and most relevant of modern tragedies. This work provides a definitive account of genocide, setting out to clarify the issues. It makes the important argument that each instance of genocide is best understood within a particular historical framework.

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I’ll be posting these book recommendations on or close to Monday’s. Watch for the first post in this new series this Monday. We will be taking a closer look at the current conflict in Darfur.  Many thanks.