Book description
A shattering history of the last hundred years of genocidal war which
won the Pulitzer Prize for Non-fiction 2003.
'The United States has never in its history intervened to stop genocide
and has in fact rarely even made a point of condemning it as it occurred.'
In this convincing and definitive interrogation of the last century of
American history and foreign policy, Samantha Power draws upon
declassified documents, private papers, unprecedented interviews and her
own reporting from the modern killing fields to tell the story of
American indifference and American courage in the face of man's
inhumanity to man.
Tackling the argument that successive US leaders were unaware of
genocidal horrors as they were occurring - against Armenians, Jews,
Cambodians, Kurds, Rwandans, Bosnians - Samantha Power seeks to
establish precisely how much was known and when, and claims that much
human misery and tragedy could readily have been averted. It is clear
that the failure to intervene was usually caused not by ignorance or
impotence, but by considered political inaction. Several heroic figures
did work to oppose and expose ethnic cleansing as it took place, but the
majority of American politicians chose always to do nothing, as did the
American public: Power notes that 'no US president has ever suffered
politically for his indifference to its occurrence. It is thus no
coincidence that genocide rages on.' This riveting book makes a powerful
case for why America, as both sole superpower and global citizen, must
make such indifference a thing of the past. 'Fascinating. An important
book, a superb piece of reporting which cumulatively grows into a major
political work, part polemic, part moral philosophy.' Observer
'Deeply researched and trenchantly argued. A devastating indictment not
just of the American foreign policy establishment but of the country's
entire political class, the media and even the wider public.' Niall
Ferguson, Sunday Times
'Power is part of an inspiring generation of political thinkers who are
academically brilliant but who also know how to write.' David Hare, Book
of the Year, Observer Samantha Power founded the Carr Center for Human
Rights Policy at Harvard University, and is now a faculty affiliate.
From 1993 to 1996 she covered the wars in Yugoslavia as a reporter for
US News and the Economist. A native of Ireland, she moved to the US in
1979 at the age of nine, and graduated from Yale University and Harvard
Law School.
