Genocide: A Bibliography
Alex Alvarez, Governments, Citizens, and Genocide: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary Approach. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001. A superbly concise and articulate study.
George J. Andreopoulos, ed., Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994. Uneven but sometimes helpful compendium.
Omer Bartov, Anita Grossmann, and Mary Nolan, eds. Crimes of War: Guilt and Denial in the Twentieth Century. New York: New Press, 2002. Fine introduction to war crimes and genocide.
Kenneth J. Campbell, Genocide and the Global Village. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Brief but piquant essay.
Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, The History and Sociology of Genocide. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990. Early and eclectic treatment, still widely read and cited.
Israel W. Charny, ed., The Encyclopedia of Genocide, 2 vols. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1999. Useful reference work.
Levon Chorbajian and George Shirinian, eds., Studies in Comparative Genocide. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. First-rate collection of essays, with special attention to the Armenian genocide.
Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan, eds., The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. One of the best edited volumes on the subject; diverse and vigorously written throughout.
Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999. Addresses genocide but ranges far beyond it; a central work of our time.
William L. Hewitt, ed., Defining the Horrific: Readings on Genocide and Holocaust in the Twentieth Century. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2004. Accessible, wide-ranging readings designed for classroom use.
Kurt Jonassohn with Karin Solveig Björnson, Genocide and Gross Human Rights Violations in Comparative Perspective. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1998. Eclectic, open-minded volume.
Adam Jones, ed., Genocide, War Crimes & the West: History and Complicity. London: Zed Books, 2004. "The most comprehensive treatment of Western responsibility for mass atrocity yet published" (Richard Falk); naturally I agree.
Leo Kuper, Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981. The foundational text of comparative genocide studies, still in print.
Raphael Lemkin, Key Writings of Raphael Lemkin on Genocide. Compiled by PreventGenocide.org, http://www.preventgenocide.org/lemkin. Online selection of Lemkin's core work on genocide.
Manus I. Midlarsky, The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Rich, well-written study from a political science perspective.
Patricia Marchak, Reigns of Terror. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003. Worthwhile study of genocide and crimes against humanity.
Nicolaus Mills and Kira Brunner, eds., The New Killing Fields: Massacre and the Politics of Intervention. New York: Basic Books, 2002. Exceptional essays, with a journalistic tinge.
Samantha Power, "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide. New York: Basic Books, 2002. Power's multiple-awardwinning study focuses on the US response to various genocides.
Alan S. Rosenbaum, ed. Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998. Important, controversial essays.
Richard L. Rubenstein, The Age of Triage: Fear and Hope in an Overcrowded World. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1983. Groundbreaking study of the elimination of unwanted populations.
Dinah Shelton, ed., Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. 3 vols. Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference, 2005. Massive, admirably inclusive work that supersedes Charny’s edited encyclopedia (see above) as the standard reference.
Samuel Totten et al., eds., Century of Genocide: Eyewitness Accounts and Critical Views. New York: Garland Publishing, 1997. Unparalleled collection of analyses and testimony; now available in a new edition.
Samuel Totten and Steven Leonard Jacobs, eds., Pioneers of Genocide Studies. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002. Testimonial essays by leading scholars of comparative genocide studies.
Isidor Wallimann and Michael N. Dobkowski, eds., Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and Case Studies of Mass Death. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000. Reissue of an early, now rather dated work.
Eric D. Weitz, A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003. Cogent overview, with case studies paralleling some in this volume.
Benjamin Whitaker, Revised and Updated Report on the Question of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (The Whitaker Report). ECOSOC (United Nations), 2 July 1985, available in full at http://www.preventgenocide.org/prevent/UNdocs/whitaker. Significant attempt to rethink and revise the UN Genocide Convention.
[See also the separate Bibliography of War prepared by Adam Jones.]
Omer Bartov, Hitler's Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Brief, seminal study; see also Bartov's The Eastern Front, 1941-45.
Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege, 1942-1943. New York: Penguin, 1999. Unforgettable depiction of the battle of Stalingrad, a microcosm of the Soviet-German war.
Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking. New York: Penguin, 1998. Account of Japan's genocidal massacres and mass rape in China in 1937-38.
John Dower, War without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War. New York: Pantheon, 1986. Analyzes the racism of both the US and Japanese war efforts in the Asia-Pacific.
Barbara Ehrenreich, Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1997. Fascinating interpretation of warfare as a vestige of human beings' prehistoric struggle against predators.
J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle. Omaha, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. First published in 1959: an exquisitely-written evocation of the soldier's soul.
Fred Halliday, Revolution and World Politics: The Rise and Fall of the Sixth Great Power. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999. Global overview by a leading scholar of revolutions.
Eric J. Leed, No Man's Land: Combat and Identity in World War I. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Perhaps the most enlightening depiction of trench warfare in World War I.
Robert Jay Lifton and Eric Markusen, The Genocidal Mentality: Nazi Holocaust and Nuclear Threat. New York: Basic Books, 1990. Compares the mindset of Nazi leaders and functionaries with that of their counterparts in the nuclear age.
Eric Markusen and David Kopf, The Holocaust and Strategic Bombing: Genocide and Total War in the Twentieth Century. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995. Excellent analysis of points of sociological and psychological crossover.
Arno J. Mayer, The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. Epic study of two seminal revolutions.
Robert Melson, Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Important exploration of the interweaving of war, revolution, and genocide.
Jean-Paul Sartre and Arlette El Kaïm-Sartre, On Genocide. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1968. Sartre's controversial essay, set alongside evidence of US crimes in Vietnam.
Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth and the Abolition. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. Two key works on nuclearism, now in a combined edition.
Martin Shaw, War and Genocide: Organized Killing in Modern Society. Cambridge: Polity, 2003. The best introduction to the subject.
Yukiko Tanaka, Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II. Boulder, CA: Westview Press, 1997. Examines biological experiments, sexual enslavement, and atrocities against prisoners-of-war.
Roy F. Baumeister, Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty. New York: W.H. Freeman & Co., 1999. An involving inquiry into the nature of evil.
Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: HarperPerennial, 1998. How a group of middle-aged German reservists were conscripted into genocidal killing.
Neil J. Kressel, Mass Hate: The Global Rise of Genocide and Terror. New York: Plenum Press, 1996. Focuses on the psychology of genocidal perpetrators; usefully read alongside Waller (see below).
Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. New York: HarperPerennial, 1995. "The Milgram Experiments": a classic of social-scientific investigation.
Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber, eds., Understanding Genocide: The Social Psychology of the Holocaust. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Essays on perpetrators and bystanders in the Jewish and other genocides.
Samuel P. Oliner and Pearl M. Oliner, The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe. New York: The Free Press, 1988. Intensely moving large-sample study.
Irene Gut Opdyke with Jennifer Armstrong, In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer. New York: Anchor Books, 2001. Brief, potent memoir.
Ervin Staub, The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Early, respected study of the psychology of genocide.
Samuel Vaknin, Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited, 5th rev. ed. Skopje: Narcissus Publications, 2003. Lengthy study by an expert on narcissism.
James Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Social-psychological account, readable and up-to-date.
Emmy E. Werner, A Conspiracy of Decency: The Rescue of the Danish Jews. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2002. Perhaps the most famous case of the "rescuer mentality" at work.
Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000. Influential sociological interpretation of the Jewish genocide.
Pierre L. van den Berghe, ed., State Violence and Ethnicity. Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado, 1990. One of the best sociological works on genocide and state terror.
Paul R. Brass, ed., Riots and Pogroms. New York: New York University Press, 1996. Vigorous edited volume on the dynamics of ethnic violence.
Amy Chua, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability. New York: Anchor, 2004. Provocative overview of "market-dominant minorities."
Helen Fein, Genocide: A Sociological Perspective. London: Sage, 1993. Short, influential treatise.
H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1954. Writings of the great German theorist of authority, modernity, and bureaucracy.
Alexander Laban Hinton, ed., Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002. A groundbreaking anthology; see also Genocide: An Anthropological Reader.
Donald L. Horowitz, The Deadly Ethnic Riot. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001. Massive, eye-opening treatise on ethnic violence.
Irving Louis Horowitz, Taking Lives: Genocide and State Power, 4th ed. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1997. Rambling sociological account, now in its fourth edition (the author founded the publisher).
Victoria Sanford, Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Sanford worked alongside the Guatemalan forensic anthropology team.
James C. Scott, Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998. Fascinating study of "high-modernist" social planning, relevant to studies of state terror and totalitarian systems.
Jeffrey A. Sluka, ed. Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. Another important anthology.
Anthony D. Smith, National Identity. London: Penguin, 1991. Fine primer on the ethnic and cultural roots of nationalism.
Wolfgang Sofsky, The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp, trans. William Templer. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999. Profound, aphoristic study.
Eric Stover and Gilles Peress, The Graves: Srebrenica and Vukovar. Zurich: Scalo Publishers, 1998. Haunting images and text of forensic excavations in Bosnia and Croatia.
Christopher C. Taylor, Sacrifice As Terror: The Rwandan Genocide of 1994. Oxford: Berg, 1999. Valuable anthropological insights into the Rwandan holocaust.
Susan Burgerman, Moral Victories: How Activists Provoke Multilateral Action. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001. Concise study with a Latin American focus.
Errol A. Henderson, Democracy and War: The End of an Illusion? Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2002. Myth-shattering analysis of democracies' involvement in international conflict.
Kalevi J. Holsti, The State, War, and the State of War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Arguably the best introduction to global transformations in warfare.
Mary Kaldor, New & Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. Another core text of the new security studies.
Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1998. The role of transnational nongovernmental networks in norm entrepreneurship and regime formation.
Stephen D. Krasner, ed. International Regimes. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983. Groundbreaking study.
R.J. Rummel, Death by Government. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1994. Comprehensive study of government-directed mass killing, marred by cheerleading for liberal democracy.
Ward Thomas, The Ethics of Destruction: Norms and Force in International Relations. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001. Elegantly-written study of normative constraints on warmaking.
African Rights. Rwanda: Not So Innocent: When Women Become Killers. London: African Rights, 1995. Taboo-shattering account of women's participation in the 1994 genocide.
Gendercide Watch. http://www.gendercide.org. Educational website featuring two dozen detailed case-studies of gendercide.
Michael P. Ghiglieri, The Dark Side of Man: Tracing the Origins of Male Violence. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books, 2000. Argues that men are biologically programmed to wage war and commit genocide.
Joshua S. Goldstein, War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Wide-ranging interdisciplinary overview.
Human Rights Watch, Shattered Lives: Sexual Violence during the Rwanda Genocide and Its Aftermath. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1996. Examines the targeting of women for rape in the Rwandan holocaust; available on the Web at http://hrw.org/reports/1996/Rwanda.htm.
Adam Jones, ed., Gendercide and Genocide. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004. The most wide-ranging book on gender-selective killing.
Rohit Lentin, ed. Gender & Catastrophe. London: Zed Books, 1997. Essays on the gendering of genocide, slavery, poverty, and famine, with an emphasis on women.
Lois Ann Lorentzen and Jennifer Turpin, eds., The Women and War Reader. New York: New York University Press, 1998. Solid anthology of writings on women's victimization and agency in wartime.
Caroline O.N. Moser and Fiona C. Clark, eds., Victims, Perpetrators or Actors? Gender, Armed Conflict and Political Violence. London: Zed Books 2001. Groundbreaking edited volume.
Elenor Richter-Lyonette, ed., In the Aftermath of Rape: Women's Rights, War Crimes, and Genocide. Givrins: Coordination of Women's Advocacy, 1997. Examines genocidal rape, with emphasis on the Balkans and Rwandan cases.
Alexandra Stiglmayer, ed., Mass Rape: The War against Women in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. The standard source on sexual violence against women in the Balkans wars.
Klaus Theweleit, Male Fantasies, Volume 1: Women, Floods, Bodies, History. Profound psychoanalytical study of fascism and masculinity.
Mary Anne Warren, Gendercide: The Implications of Sex Selection. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld, 1985. Coined the term "gendercide," though with a focus on reproductive technologies.
Richard J. Evans, Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial. New York: Basic Books, 2001. Briskly-paced account of Irving's defamation suit, by a historian who served as defense witness.
John R. Gillis, ed., Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. How collective memory shapes national identity.
Jeffrey Herf, Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. Intricate rendering of Germany's "search for a usable past."
Richard G. Hovannisian, ed., Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1999. Seminal essays on Armenian genocide denial and its place in collective memory.
David E. Lorey and William H. Beezley, Genocide, Collective Violence, and Popular Memory: The Politics of Remembrance in the Twentieth Century. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 2002. The best introduction to genocide and memory.
Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life. Boston, MA: Mariner Books, 2000. Fascinating, myth-shattering exploration of how the Jewish Holocaust was remembered and deployed by American Jews and others.
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four. London: Penguin, 1983. Satire of the manipulation of history and memory under totalitarianism.
Michael Shermer, Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?, rev. ed. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000. Excellent, richly-documented rebuttal of Jewish holocaust deniers.
Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History. Cambridge: Canto, 1998. History, memory, and memorialization in post-World War One Europe.
Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: The Viking Press, 1965. Arendt's controversial account of the trial in Israel of Adolf Eichmann, the ultimate faceless bureaucrat.
Elazar Barkan, The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2001. Wide-ranging overview of contemporary forms of redress.
Roy Gutman and David Rieff, Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1999. Richly (sometimes disturbingly) illustrated encyclopedia.
Priscilla B. Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity. New York: Routledge, 2001. Energetic insider account of truth commissions.
David Hirsh, Law against Genocide: Cosmopolitan Trials. London: Glasshouse Press, 2003. Moderately helpful study, focusing on four recent trials related to genocide and crimes against humanity.
Martha Minow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1998. A good introduction to truth and redress.
Nunca Más: The Report of the Argentine National Commission on the Disappeared. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1986; Spanish edition online at http://www.nuncamas.org/index.htm. The groundbreaking investigation of crimes by the Argentine junta (1976-83).
W. Michael Reisman and Chris T. Antoniou, eds., The Laws of War: A Comprehensive Collection of Primary Documents on International Laws Governing Armed Conflict. New York: Vintage, 1994. Core texts with commentary.
Steven R. Ratner and Jason S. Abrams, Accountability for Human Rights Atrocities in International Law: Beyond the Nuremberg Legacy, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Best read alongside Schabas (see below), with a useful Cambodia case study.
Geoffrey Robertson, Crimes Against Humanity: The Struggle for Global Justice. New York: The New Press, 2000. Thin on genocide, but elegantly written and bracingly opinionated.
William A. Schabas, Genocide in International Law: The Crime of Crimes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Dry, and expensive as hell, but an indispensable reference work.
Sarah B. Sewall and Carl Kaysen, eds., The United States and the International Criminal Court: National Security and International Law. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. Essays analyzing the ICC initiative in historical context.
John G. Heidenrich, How to Prevent Genocide: A Guide for Policymakers, Scholars, and the Concerned Citizen. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001. Emphasizes military intervention strategies.
Leo Kuper, The Prevention of Genocide. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. Kuper's second and final book on genocide focuses on UN performance and preventive strategies.
PreventGenocide.org. http://www.preventgenocide.org. Indispensable resources and prevention strategies.
Neal Riemer, ed., Protection Against Genocide: Mission Impossible? Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000. Short, readable volume on genocide prevention.
Nicholas Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Now the standard text on humanitarian intervention.
Patrick Brantlinger, Dark Vanishings: Discourse on the Extinction of Primitive Races, 1800-1930. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003. Examines European racial attitudes toward "primitive" races and their extinction.
Bartolomé de las Casas, The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account, trans. Herma Briffault. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974. First published in 1552: a Spanish friar's impassioned description of colonial depredations in the Americas.
Ward Churchill, A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 1997. Rigorous analysis of the holocaust against Native Americans from a comparative-genocide perspective.
Ken S. Coates, A Global History of Indigenous Peoples: Struggle and Survival. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. A solid introduction, especially good on World War Two and the postwar era.
Mark Cocker, Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold: Europe's Conquest of Indigenous Peoples. New York: Grove Press, 2001. Comprehensive survey, ranging from the Americas to Africa and Australasia.
Mary Crow Dog with Richard Erdoes, Lakota Woman. New York: HarperPerennial, 1991. Rich memoir by a Native American activist.
Richard Drinnon, Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian Hating & Empire Building. New York: Schocken Books, 1990. The racist ideology underlying US wars against American Indians, Filipinos, and Indochinese.
Jan-Bart Gewald, Herero Heroes: A Socio-Political History of the Herero of Namibia, 1890-1923. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2001. Study by the leading expert on the German genocide against the Herero.
Sven Lindqvist, "Exterminate all the Brutes": One Man's Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide. New York: The New Press, 1996. Epigrammatic meditation on holocausts against colonized peoples, and their link to the Nazi genocide against Jews.
Rigoberta Menchú with Elisabeth Burgos-Débray, I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala. New York: Verso, 1987. Memoir by the Nobel Peace Prize winner, swept up with her family in the genocide against Maya Indians in the 1970s and '80s.
MariJo Moore, ed., Genocide of the Mind: New Native American Writing. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2003. Soul-searching reflections by native writers.
Alan Moorehead, The Fatal Impact: The Invasion of the South Pacific, 1767-1840. New York: HarperCollins, 1990. First published in 1966, this still stands as a moving introduction to the devastation of Pacific indigenous peoples.
A. Dirk Moses, ed., Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History. New York: Berghahn Books, 2004. Seminal collection of essays.
Ronald Niezen, The Origins of Indigenism: Human Rights and the Politics of Identity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003. The growth of contemporary indigenous identities and movements.
Nicholas Robins, Native Insurgencies and the Genocidal Impulse in the Americas. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005. Groundbreaking study of Indian millenarian movements that adopted genocidal strategies against the European invader.
David E. Stannard, American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Perhaps the most enduring of the works published for the Columbus quincentenary.
Daniel Wilkinson, Silence on the Mountain: Stories of Terror, Betrayal, and Forgetting in Guatemala. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002. Intimate glimpse of upheaval in Maya Indian communities during the genocide; usefully read alongside Menchú (see above).
James Wilson, The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1998. Fine overview of the native experience in North America.
Ronald Wright, Stolen Continents: The "New World" Through Indian Eyes. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1993. Views the conquest throughout the western hemisphere from the perspective of its victims.
Geoffrey York, The Dispossessed: Life and Death in Native Canada. London: Vintage UK, 1990. Harrowing journalistic account of poverty and cultural dislocation among Canada's native peoples.
Taner Akçam, From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide. London: Zed Books, 2004. The first book in English by the dissident Turkish scholar.
Peter Balakian, The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. The best overview of the genocide and the US humanitarian response; see also Black Dog of Fate (memoir).
Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Excellent on the international machinations surrounding the "Armenian question."
Vahakn N. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus. Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1995. Background to the genocide.
Mae Derdarian, Vergeen: A Survivor of the Armenian Genocide. Los Angeles, CA: Atmus Press Publications, 1998. Moving survivor's testimony.
G. S. Graber, Caravans to Oblivion: The Armenian Genocide, 1915. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996. Readable popular account.
Robert Melson, Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Theoretically rich study.
Donald E. Miller and Lorna Touryan Miller, Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999. Fine oral history focusing on the experiences of Armenian children.
Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story. http://www.cilicia.com/morgenthau/MorgenTC.htm. Memoirs of the US ambassador to Constantinople.
The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-16. See http://www.cilicia.com/bryce/a00tc.htm. Text of the British "Blue Book" (published in 1916) on atrocities against the Armenians.
Martin Amis, Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million. New York: Hyperion, 2002. British novelist's uneven but evocative study of Stalin's era and personality.
Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History. London: Penguin, 2003. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize; now the standard single-volume history of the Soviet forced-labour camps.
Janusz Bardach (trans. Kathleen Gleeson), Man is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999. Vivid memoir.
Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Conveys the single-minded sadism and epic human destruction of the Ukrainian famine of 1929-33.
Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Updated version of Conquest's seminal 1960s study.
Stéphane Courtois et al., The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Massive indictment of communist regimes; includes Nicolas Werth's study of the USSR, "A State against Its People."
Miron Dolot, Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1985. Memoir of the Ukrainian famine.
Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution. New York: Viking, 1996. Peerless study of the war and crises that brought Lenin and Stalin to power.
Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Individual perspectives on broad social transformations; see also The Russian Revolution, 1917-1932, a concise account.
Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope, trans. Max Hayward. New York: The Modern Library, 1999. Powerful, poetic recollections of the Stalinist terror.
Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. London: Phoenix, 2004. Montefiore's account of life in the Stalinist "court" is gossipy and galvanizing.
Robert Service, Stalin: A Biography. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 2005. Highly serviceable biography, though a bit brisk with the human consequences of Stalin's rule.
Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Tales. London: Penguin, 1994. Documentary-style short stories about the Kolyma camps, by a former inmate.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956. New York: HarperPerennial, 2002. Abridged one-volume version of Solzhenitsyn's classic three-volume study of the camp system.
Robert W. Thurston, Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934-1941. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996. Fine social history.
Chris Ward, ed., The Stalinist Dictatorship, 2nd ed. London: Arnold, 1998. Comprehensive survey of the roots and functioning of the Stalinist system.
Götz Aly, "Final Solution": Nazi Population Policy and the Murder of the European Jews. London: Arnold, 1999. Aly's "functionalist" argument depicts the holocaust as the product of a Nazi bureaucracy confronted with problems of population management.
Omer Bartov, Germany's War and the Holocaust: Disputed Histories. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003. Powerful essays by the principal scholar of the Wehrmacht's war on the Eastern Front; see also Hitler's Army.
Omer Bartov, ed., The Holocaust: Origins, Implementation, Aftermath: Rewriting Histories. London: Routledge, 2000. Excellent anthology of writings by many of the leading scholars of the holocaust.
Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: Perennial, 1993. Based on some of the same archival sources as Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners (see below), but emphasizes group dynamics in addition to anti-semitism.
Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. How Nazi racial ideology inspired genocidal policy.
Alexander Donat, The Holocaust Kingdom. New York: Holocaust Library, 1978. Classic memoir of ghetto and death camp, sensitively told and translated.
Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. Traces the evolution of the Nazi killing machine from the initial targeting of disabled and handicapped Germans to the mass slaughter of Jews and "Gypsies."
Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume I: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. Innovative, highly-readable account of the years preceding the onset of fully-fledged genocide.
Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Argues that ordinary Germans generally supported Nazi policies, often evincing enthusiasm beyond the call of duty.
Robert Gellately and Nathan Stoltzfus, eds. Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. The most wide-ranging overview of the Nazis' obsession with "asocial" groups and individuals.
Daniel J. Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Vintage, 1997. Controversial book ascribing a monocausal explanation to the Jewish holocaust, rooted in Germans' visceral hatred of the Jews.
Richard Grunberger, A Social History of the Third Reich. London: Penguin, 1974. Encyclopedic overview of Nazism's social impact.
Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 3rd ed., 3 vols. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. Massive, meticulous study of the bureaucracy of death.
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), trans. Ralph Mannheim. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. First published in 1925-26; lays out Hitler's vision of German destiny, as well as his virulent hatred of the Jews.
Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems & Perspectives of Interpretation, 4th ed. London: Arnold, 2000. Classic overview of, and contribution to, scholarly debates about the nature of the Nazi regime.
Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 2 vols. New York: Modern Library, 1999, 2001. One of the essential documents of the twentieth century: the astonishing testimony of a German Jew who lived through the entire Nazi era.
Ronnie S. Landau, The Nazi Holocaust. Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, 1994. Perhaps the best short overview of the origins and course of the Jewish catastrophe.
Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz. New York: Touchstone, 1996. Haunting account of a year-and-a-half in the Nazi death camp; see also The Drowned and the Saved.
Arno J. Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? The "Final Solution" in History. New York: Pantheon, 1988. Illuminating, finally unsuccessful attempt to explain the holocaust in terms of Nazism's confrontation with Bolshevism.
Alan S. Rosenbaum, ed., Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide, Second Edition. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000. Wide-ranging and controversial examination of the "uniqueness" thesis.
Ron Rosenbaum, Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil. New York: Perennial, 1999. Quest for the essence of the malignancy that was Adolf Hitler.
John Weiss, Ideology of Death: Why the Holocaust Happened in Germany. Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, 1996. Why did only Germany, among antisemitic European societies, produce a fullscale genocide against the Jews?
Michael Berenbaum, ed., A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis. New York: New York University Press, 1990. Wide-ranging volume.
Michael Burleigh, Ethics and Extermination: Reflections on Nazi Genocide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Essays on themes including "euthanasia," the German-Soviet war, and the racial state.
Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. The evolution of the killing.
Robert Gellately and Nathan Stoltzfus, eds., Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. Examines the Nazi campaign against "unwanted populations."
Gerhard Hirschfeld, ed. The Policies of Genocide: Jews and Soviet Prisoners of War in Nazi Germany. Boston, MA: Allan & Unwin, 1986. The links between the fate of the Jews and the Soviet prisoners.
Guenter Lewy, The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. The first major work in English on the Roma Porrajmos, though with a disturbing tendency to downplay or even deny it.
Richard Plant, The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War against Homosexuals. New York: Owl, 1986. The persecution and killing of homosexuals, described by a refugee of the Nazi regime.
Martin K. Sorge, The Other Price of Hitler's War: German Military and Civilian Losses Resulting from World War II. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986. Concise account of German suffering in the war.
Frederick Taylor, Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945. New York: HarperCollins, 2004. Revisionist study of the Allied fire-bombing of the historic German city.
Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994. The atrocities against ethnic Germans, ably catalogued.
Jasper Becker, Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine. New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1998. Describes the catastrophe of Mao's "Great Leap Forward," with particular attention to ethnic Tibetan suffering.
Central Tibetan Administration, Tibet Under Communist China - Fifty Years. Available at http://www.tibet.net/publication/50yrs/report.html. A detailed report by the Tibetan government-in-exile; partisan but well-researched, and reflecting the government's political moderation.
Mary Craig, Tears of Blood: A Cry for Tibet. Washington, DC: Counterpoint Press, 2000. Impassioned overview of Tibet under Chinese rule.
Tsering Shakya, The Dragon in the Land of Snows: A History of Modern Tibet Since 1947. New York: Penguin Compass, 2000. "The first scholarly history of Tibet under Chinese occupation" (Time); objective and fair-minded throughout.
Rounaq Jahan, "Genocide in Bangladesh," in Samuel Totten et al., Century of Genocide. New York: Garland Publishing, 1997. A rare treatment in the genocide-studies literature.
Anthony Mascarenhas, The Rape of Bangla Desh. Delhi: Vikas Publications, 1972 [?]. A decent overview; one takes what one can get in English on this little-studied subject.
Robert Payne, Massacre. London: Macmillan, 1973. Journalistic account of the genocide.
Richard Sisson and Leo Rose, War and Secession: Pakistan, India, and the Creation of Bangladesh. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990. Focuses on policymaking by leaders during the crisis.
Elizabeth Becker, When the War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution. New York: Public Affairs, 1998. The most accessible overview of the Khmer Rouge years.
David P. Chandler, The Tragedy of Cambodian History: Politics, War and Revolution since 1945. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991. Fine short history.
Tom Fawthrop and Helen Jarvis, Getting Away with Genocide? Cambodia's Long Struggle against the Khmer Rouge. London: Pluto Press, 2004. Justice in post-genocide Cambodia.
Evan R. Gottesman, Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge: Inside the Politics of Nation Building. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. Political change and continuity after the genocide.
Alexander Laban Hinton, Why Did They Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005. Original and insightful anthropological analysis, also drawing on social and existential psychology.
Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996. Detailed study of the Khmer Rouge years; a sequel to How Pol Pot Came to Power.
Haing Ngor with Roger Warner, A Cambodian Odyssey. New York: Macmillan, 1987. Lengthy memoir by the Cambodian doctor and genocide survivor who won an Oscar for playing Dith Pran in The Killing Fields.
William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia, revised edition. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2002. The US air war against Cambodia and its role in bringing the Khmer Rouge to power.
Loung Ung, First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers. New York: HarperCollins, 2000. Memoir of a Chinese-Cambodian girl who lived through the genocide.
Michael Vickery, Cambodia 1975-1982. Boston, MA: South End Press, 1984. Revisionist study, arguing for an emphasis on local/regional dynamics.
Peter Carey and G. Carter Bentley, eds., East Timor at the Crossroads: The Forging of a Nation. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 1995. Essays on the Timorese independence struggle.
Tim Fischer, Seven Days in East Timor: Ballots and Bullets. London: Allen & Unwin, 2000. Eyewitness account of the 1999 independence plebiscite.
Matthew Jardine, East Timor: Genocide in Paradise. Berkeley, CA: Odonian Press, 1999. A succinct introduction.
John G. Taylor, East Timor: The Price of Freedom. London: Zed Books, 2000. The best all-round study, with an excellent chronology.
Human Rights Watch-Middle East, Iraq's Crime of Genocide: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds. New Haven, CT: Human Rights Watch/Yale University Press, 1994. The most intensive investigation of the Anfal events; see also The Anfal Campaign in Iraqi Kurdistan: The Destruction of Koreme.
Kanan Makiya, Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. A good overview of the terroristic Saddam Hussein regime; see also Cruelty and Silence.
Jonathan C. Randal, After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness? My Encounters with Kurdistan. Boulder: Westview Press, 1999. Taut journalistic account of Iraq's war against the Kurds, with detailed attention to the historical context.
Fred Abrahams, Gilles Peress, and Eric Stover, A Village Destroyed, May 14, 1999: War Crimes in Kosovo. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001. Vivid photographic record and text.
David Chandler, Bosnia: Faking Democracy after Dayton, 2nd ed. London: Pluto Press, 1999. Fine overview of Bosnia's first postwar years.
Misha Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia: The Third Balkan War, 3rd rev. ed. London: Penguin, 1996. Solid journalistic overview, best read alongside Silber and Little (see below).
Helsinki Watch, War Crimes in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Vol. 2. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1993. Detailed investigation of atrocities in the early phase of the Bosnian war.
Michael Ignatieff, Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond. New York: Viking, 2000. Short, stimulating book examining Kosovo in the context of modern media and military technologies.
Robert D. Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993. Clichéd but influential survey of recent Balkans history.
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Kosovo/Kosova: As Seen, As Told. Available at http://www.osce.org/kosovo/documents/reports/hr/part1/. The most detailed report on atrocities in Kosovo.
David Rohde, Endgame: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica, Europe's Worst Massacre Since World War II. Boulder: Westview, 1998. Heart-stopping account of the 1995 catastrophe.
Louis Sell, Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002. Excellent study of Milosevic's rise and fall.
Laura Silber and Allan Little, The Death of Yugoslavia, rev. ed. London: BBC Books, 1996. The best introduction to the breakup of Yugoslavia.
Chuck Sudetic, Blood and Vengeance: One Family's Story of the War in Bosnia. London: Penguin, 1998. Intimate portrait of Bosnia in upheaval.
Ed Vulliamy, Seasons in Hell: Understanding Bosnia's War. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994. Seminal reportage.
African Rights, Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance, rev. ed. London: African Rights, 1995. By far the most detailed and harrowing depiction of the Rwandan holocaust.
Roméo Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2004. Autobiography of the leader of the UN mission in Rwanda in 1993-94.
Alison Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999. Another indispensable human-rights report on the genocide.
Nigel Eltringham, Accounting for Horror: Post-Genocide Debates in Rwanda. London: Pluto Press, 2004. The aftermath.
Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998. Gourevitch's bestselling work is energetic but overrated.
Jean Hatzfeld, Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak, trans. Linda Coverdale. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005. Chilling testimony from imprisoned génocidaires.
Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. How political identity was constructed for Hutus and Tutsis.
Linda Melvern, Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwanda Genocide and the International Community. London: Verso, 2004. Follow-up to the author's hard-hitting A People Betrayed.
Gérard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Considered by many the standard source on the origins of the genocide.
Carol Rittner, John K. Roth and Wendy Whitworth, eds., Genocide in Rwanda: Complicity of the Churches? St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2004. Insights into the church's role, perhaps a bit generous.
Christian P. Scherrer, Genocide and Crisis in Central Africa: Conflict Roots, Mass Violence, and Regional War. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2002. The most complete account of the politics of the genocide and its regional repercussions.
Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal, Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus. New York: New York University Press, 1998. Well-informed journalistic account of the first Chechen war.
Human Rights Watch, Swept Under: Torture, Forced Disappearances, and Extrajudicial Killings during Sweep Operations in Chechnya. February 2002. Available at http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/russchech. Major HRW report on atrocities in the renewed war against Chechens.
Anna Politkovskaya, A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Writings by a Russian journalist who has been a persistent thorn in her government's side.
Richard Sakwa, ed., Chechnya: From the Past to the Future. London: Anthem Press, 2005. Diverse and up-to-date collection.
John F. Clark, ed., The African Stakes of the Congo War. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Wide-ranging edited collection on the regional implications of war and genocide in Congo.
Alex De Waal, Famine That Kills: Darfur, Sudan, rev. ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Updated edition of a classic study.
Michaela Wrong, In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo. New York: Perennial, 2002. Insightful journalistic account of life in Congo (then Zaire) under the Mobutu dictatorship.
Suggested additions to this bibliography
are welcome: