Recommendations from our site
“She describes how Saddam destroyed every village in Kurdistan and gassed the Kurds. The US Senate actually tried to stop the genocide by imposing comprehensive sanctions on Iraq, unanimously passing The Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988. The Reagan administration opposed even weak sanctions, even as it agreed that Saddam had used poison gas on the Kurds. “ Read more...
Peter W. Galbraith, Political Commentator
“This was an extremely important and timely book in calling attention to the deep-seated hypocrisy that lay at the heart of American policies when facing genocide over the past century. Power’s criticism of the devastating combination of American timidity and wishful thinking in face of mass killing, especially in the mid-1990s in Bosnia and Rwanda, is palpable throughout the book. Through historical and political analysis, she sought to mobilise American citizens to place pressure on the US government to act. I think she made a genuine contribution to the heightened awareness of genocide in the US, and to the emergence of an array of NGOs that pay close attention to genocide issues.” Read more...
Norman Naimark, Historian
“When Power was writing, the Rwandan genocide had already happened, but Darfur was still to come. The sub-title of her book is ‘America and the age of genocide’, and she started work expecting to investigate how American foreign policy had coped so badly. Terrible events, including the mass killing of Armenians in Turkey early in the 20th century, and Pol Pot’s mass killings in Cambodia 60 years later, had gone completely unconfronted by the American and other governments” Read more...
The best books on Human Rights
Steve Crawshaw, Journalist
“Her basic point is that the United States denounces genocide and says genocide is a terrible thing, but almost never actually acts when it counts.” Read more...
The best books on Human Rights
Gary Bass, Political Scientist
Other books by Samantha Power
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