"Exterminate All the Brutes": One Man's Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz · 320 pages

American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World

David E. Stannard · 358 pages

For four hundred years - from the first Spanish assaults against the Arawak people of Hispaniola in the 1490s to the U.S. Army's massacre of Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee in the 1890s - the indigenous inhabitants of North and South America endured an unending firestorm of violence. During that time the native population of the Western Hemisphere declined by as many as one hundred million people. I

King Leopold's Ghost

Adam Hochschild · 375 pages

In the 1880s, as the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. Carrying out a genocidal plundering of the Congo, he looted its rubber, brutalized its people, and ultimately slashed its population by ten million--all the while shrewdly cultivating his reputation as a great humanitarian.

The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History

Ned Blackhawk · 596 pages

Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World

Mike Davis · 467 pages

Stolen Continents: 500 Years of Conquest and Resistance in the Americas

Ronald Wright · 424 pages

Intent to Destroy: Russia’s Two-Hundred-Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine

Eugene Finkel · 336 pages

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West

Dee Brown · 512 pages

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present

David Treuer · 512 pages

Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire

Alex von Tunzelmann · 440 pages

"The stroke of midnight on 15 August 1947 liberated 400 million Indians from the British Empire. One of the defining moments of world history had been brought about by a tiny number of people, including Jawaharlal Nehru, the fiery prime minister-to-be; Gandhi, the mystical figure who enthralled a nation; and Louis and Edwina Mountbatten, the glamorous but unlikely couple who had been dispatched to

The Hundred-Year Walk: An Armenian Odyssey

Dawn Anahid MacKeen · 354 pages

"The inspiring story of a young Armenian's harrowing escape from genocide and of his granddaughter's quest to retrace his steps. Growing up, Dawn MacKeen heard fragments of her grandfather Stepan's story, of how he was swept up in the deadly mass deportation of Armenians during World War I and of how he miraculously managed to escape. Longing for a fuller picture of Stepan's life--and the lost hom

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

Hannah Arendt · 312 pages

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families

Philip Gourevitch · 355 pages

An unforgettable firsthand account of a people's response to genocide and what it tells us about humanity. This remarkable debut book chronicles what has happened in Rwanda and neighboring states since 1994, when the Rwandan government called on everyone in the Hutu majority to murder everyone in the Tutsi minority. Though the killing was low-tech--largely by machete--it was carried out at shoc

Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning

Timothy Snyder · 480 pages

"It comforts us to believe that the Holocaust was a unique event. But as Timothy Snyder shows, we have missed basic lessons of the history of the Holocaust, and some of our beliefs are frighteningly close to the ecological panic that Hitler expressed in the 1920s. As ideological and environmental challenges to the world order mount, our societies might be more vulnerable than we would like to thin

East West Street: On the Origins of "Genocide" and "Crimes Against Humanity"

Philippe Sands · 444 pages

When human rights lawyer Philippe Sands received an invitation to deliver a lecture in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, he began to uncover a series of extraordinary historical coincidences. It set him on a quest that would take him halfway around the world in an exploration of the origins of international law and the pursuit of his own secret family history, beginning and ending with the last

The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide

Gary J. Bass · 499 pages

A full-length account of the involvement of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in Pakistan's brutal 1970s military dictatorship argues that they encouraged China's military presence in India, illegally supplied weapons used in massacres and embraced military strategies that have negatively impacted geopolitics for decades. By the author of Freedom's Battle.

The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide

Robert Jay Lifton · 561 pages

A People's History of the United States

Howard Zinn · 702 pages

Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, *A People's History of the United States* is the only volume to tell America's story from the point of view of -- and in the words of -- America's women, factory workers, African Americans, Native Americans, working poor, and immigrant laborers.

The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy

Martin Gilbert · 959 pages

Sets the scene with a brief history of anti-Semitism prior to Hitler, and documents the horrors of the Holocaust from 1933 onward, in an incisive, interpretive account of the genocide of World War II.

The War Against the Jews: 1933-1945

Lucy S. Dawidowicz · 466 pages

The systematic annihilation of six million Jews during World War II is the single most horrifying event of the twentieth century. Though much has been written on this subject of overwhelming terror and tragedy, the basic question persists: how could a modern state carry out the systematic murder of a whole people for no other reason than that they were Jews? In The War Against the Jews 1933-1945,

Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare

Philip Short · 550 pages

"The man the world knew as Pol Pot headed one of the most enigmatic and terrifying regimes of modern times. An idealistic reclusive figure of great charisma and personal charm, he initiated a revolution whose radical egalitarianism exceeded any other in history. In the process, his country descended into madness and his name became a byword for sanguinary oppression. During the three-and-a-half ye

Life Laid Bare: The Survivors in Rwanda Speak

Jean Hatzfeld · 256 pages

"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 fourtee

Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

Immaculee Ilibagiza · 215 pages

Immaculee 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. Immaculee's family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans. Incredibly, Immaculee survived the slaughter. For 91 days, she and seven other

A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide

Samantha Power · 656 pages

""A Problem from Hell" is a path-breaking interrogation of the last century of American history. Samantha Power poses a question that haunts our nation's past: Why do American leaders who vow "never again" repeatedly fail to marhsal the will and the might to stop genocide? She provides the answer in the form of the suspenseful story of courageous individuals who risked their careers and lives in a