From the tragic workings of the Holocaust and Hiroshima to contemporary examples of genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda, this provocative collection of original essays examines the enduring impact of cataclysmic events on the modern human psyche. Inspired by the career of Robert Jay Lifton, the distinguished contributors use a wide range of disciplinary and methodological approaches to probe society, culture, and politics in the nuclear age and they explore the therapeutic value of artistic expression to witnesses and survivors of mass violence. The essays convey a message of hope by displaying the remarkable diversity of human responses to extreme adversity and by concluding that intellectuals and professionals have an abiding obligation to act responsibly in a world of violence and to provide healing images of transformation. Contributors: Paul Boyer, John M. Broughton, Harvey Cox, Wendy Doniger, Bonnie Dugger, Kai Erikson, Richard Falk, Michael Flynn, Eva Fogelman, John Fousek, Elinor Fuchs, Lane Gerber, Charles Green, Hillel Levine, John E. Mack, Karen Malpede, Eric Markusen, Saul Mendlovitz, Greg Mitchell, George L. Mosse, Ashis Nandy, Martin J. Sherwin, Victor W. Sidel, Bennett Simon, Charles B. Strozier, Steven M. Weine, Roger Williamson, Howard Zin

“If there is one book you should read on the Rwandan Genocide, this is it. Tested to the Limit—A Genocide Survivor’s Story of Pain, Resilience, and Hope is a riveting and courageous account from the perspective of a fourteen year- old girl. It’s a powerful story you will never forget.” —Francine LeFrak, founder of Same Sky and award-winning producer “That someone who survived such a horrific, life-altering experience as the Rwandan genocide could find the courage to share her story truly amazes me. But even more incredible is that Consolee Nishimwe refused to let the inhumane acts she suffered strip away her humanity, zest for life and positive outlook for a better future. After reading Tested to the Limit, I am in awe of the unyielding strength and resilience of the human spirit to overcome against all odds.” —Kate Ferguson, senior editor, POZ magazine “Consolee Nishimwe’s story of resilience, perseverance, and grace after surviving genocide, rape, and torture is a testament to the transformative power of unyielding faith and a commitment to love. Her inspiring narrative about compassionate courage and honest revelations about her spiritual path in the face of unthinkable adversity remind us that hope is eternal, and miracles happen every day.” —Jamia Wilson, vice president of programs, Women’s Media Center, New York

In examining one of the defining events of the twentieth century, Doris L. Bergen situates the Holocaust in its historical, political, social, cultural, and military contexts. Unlike many other treatments of the Holocaust, the revised, second edition of War and Genocide discusses not only the persecution of the Jews, but also other segments of society victimized by the Nazis: gypsies, homosexuals, Poles, Soviet POWs, the handicapped, and other groups deemed undesirable. In clear and eloquent prose, Bergen explores the two interconnected goals that drove the Nazi German program of conquest and genocide—purification of the so-called Aryan race and expansion of its living space—and discusses how these goals affected the course of World War II. Including first hand accounts from perpetrators, victims, and eyewitnesses, the book is immediate, human, and eminently readable.

Illuminating the unique experiences of women both during and after genocide, JoAnn DiGeorgio-Lutz and Donna Gosbee’s edited collection is a vital addition to genocide scholarship. The contributors revisit genocides of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from Armenia in 1915 to Gujarat in 2002, examining the roles of women as victims, witnesses, survivors, and rescuers. The text underscores women’s experiences as a central yet often overlooked component to the understanding of genocide. Drawing from narratives, memoirs, testimonies, and literature, this groundbreaking volume brings together women’s stories of victimization, trauma, and survival. Each chapter is framed by a consistent methodology to allow for a comparative analysis, revealing the ways in which women’s experiences across genocides are similar and yet profoundly different. By looking at genocide from a gendered perspective, Women and Genocide constitutes an important contribution to feminist research on war and political violence. Featuring critical thinking questions and concise histories of each genocidal period discussed, this highly accessible text is an ideal resource for both students and instructors in this field and for anyone interested in the study of women’s lives in times of violence and conflict.

In 1944, Raphael Lemkin coined the term “genocide” to describe a foreign occupation that destroyed or permanently crippled a subject population. In this tradition, Empire, Colony, Genocide embeds genocide in the epochal geopolitical transformations of the past 500 years: the European colonization of the globe, the rise and fall of the continental land empires, violent decolonization, and the formation of nation states. It thereby challenges the customary focus on twentieth-century mass crimes and shows that genocide and “ethnic cleansing” have been intrinsic to imperial expansion. The complexity of the colonial encounter is reflected in the contrast between the insurgent identities and genocidal strategies that subaltern peoples sometimes developed to expel the occupiers, and those local elites and creole groups that the occupiers sought to co-opt. Presenting case studies on the Americas, Australia, Africa, Asia, the Ottoman Empire, Imperial Russia, and the Nazi “Third Reich,” leading authorities examine the colonial dimension of the genocide concept as well as the imperial systems and discourses that enabled conquest. Empire, Colony, Genocide is a world history of genocide that highlights what Lemkin called “the role of the human group and its tribulations.”

"In this study Polish emigre Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959) coined the term 'genocide' and defined it as a subject of international law"--Provided by publisher.

The chilling story of Stalin’s crimes against humanity Between the early 1930s and his death in 1953, Joseph Stalin had more than a million of his own citizens executed. Millions more fell victim to forced labor, deportation, famine, bloody massacres, and detention and interrogation by Stalin's henchmen. Stalin's Genocides is the chilling story of these crimes. The book puts forward the important argument that brutal mass killings under Stalin in the 1930s were indeed acts of genocide and that the Soviet dictator himself was behind them. Norman Naimark, one of our most respected authorities on the Soviet era, challenges the widely held notion that Stalin's crimes do not constitute genocide, which the United Nations defines as the premeditated killing of a group of people because of their race, religion, or inherent national qualities. In this gripping book, Naimark explains how Stalin became a pitiless mass killer. He looks at the most consequential and harrowing episodes of Stalin's systematic destruction of his own populace—the liquidation and repression of the so-called kulaks, the Ukrainian famine, the purge of nationalities, and the Great Terror—and examines them in light of other genocides in history. In addition, Naimark compares Stalin's crimes with those of the most notorious genocidal killer of them all, Adolf Hitler.

A global history of environmental warfare and the case for why it should be a crime The environmental infrastructure that sustains human societies has been a target and instrument of war for centuries, resulting in famine and disease, displaced populations, and the devastation of people’s livelihoods and ways of life. Scorched Earth traces the history of scorched earth, military inundations, and armies living off the land from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, arguing that the resulting deliberate destruction of the environment—"environcide"—constitutes total war and is a crime against humanity and nature. In this sweeping global history, Emmanuel Kreike shows how religious war in Europe transformed Holland into a desolate swamp where hunger and the black death ruled. He describes how Spanish conquistadores exploited the irrigation works and expansive agricultural terraces of the Aztecs and Incas, triggering a humanitarian crisis of catastrophic proportions. Kreike demonstrates how environmental warfare has continued unabated into the modern era. His panoramic narrative takes readers from the Thirty Years' War to the wars of France's Sun King, and from the Dutch colonial wars in North America and Indonesia to the early twentieth century colonial conquest of southwestern Africa. Shedding light on the premodern origins and the lasting consequences of total war, Scorched Earth explains why ecocide and genocide are not separate phenomena, and why international law must recognize environmental warfare as a violation of human rights.

The author describes the loss of er home in Eastern Europe during World War II, her family’s deportation to a Nazi labor camp, and our eventual arrival in the United States. Relying on historic sources, interviews with twenty survivors and personal experience, I focus on the danger of identifying solely with a group or ideology rather than with the fact of our shared humanity. Exiled from her home in Eastern Poland as a baby, the author chronicles the aggression against Polish citizens, Jewish and Christian, by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II. For many it will be the first time hearing about the deportation of thousands to the Soviet Union for forced labor, a topic they have not met in school or in the media. Nor do they know about plans to replace Christianity and all religion with deification of Hitler and the Nazi party. She weaves this type of information into true accounts of survival from 20 eyewitnesses whom I interviewed over the course of 10 years. Surviving Genocide: Personal Recollections expands our knowledge of World War II, that of the attempted genocide against Slavic Christians of Eastern Europe. Most books about surviving the war describe the struggles of one person or family. This book is different in that the people I interviewed faced diverse and generally unknown hostile environments. For example, a family is exiled to Russia near the Arctic Circle, women toil on the Kazakhstan steppe to produce food for the Soviet army, people in my village of birth in what is now Belarus face winter in holes in the ground, single girls are forced to work in German factories and as domestics, and a Catholic priest is used for medical experiments in Dachau. These survivors are primary sources who begin to demonstrate the full sweep of events as they shine a light on the dangers of identifying with a group or philosophy at the expense of our shared humanity. Surviving Genocide: Personal Recollections contains a foreword by British historian Norman Davies, an interview with Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz, an annotated bibliography, photographs, and maps. Survivors’ statements have been fact-checked and are validated by citing historic sources. I will market the book through public speaking and use of social media platforms. The number of World War II survivors is dwindling. Their witness will ensure a broader knowledge about a particular time and place in history.