NUMBER: 1TITLE: "A Problem From Hell" America and the Age of Genocide
AUTHOR: Samantha Power
STARTED: October 2005
FINISHED: January 2, 2006
PAGES: 602
GENRE: Non-Fiction
FIRST SENTENCE: My introduction to Sidbela Zimic, a nine-year-old Sarajevo, came unexpectedly one Sunday in June 1995.
SUMMARY: [From barnesandnoble.com] Power, a former journalist for U.S. News and World Report and the Economist and now the executive director of Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights, offers an uncompromising and disturbing examination of 20th-century acts of genocide and U.S responses to them. In clean, unadorned prose, Power revisits the Turkish genocide directed at Armenians in 1915-1916, the Holocaust, Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, Iraqi attacks on Kurdish populations, Rwanda, and Bosnian "ethnic cleansing," and in doing so, argues that U.S. intervention has been shamefully inadequate. The emotional force of Power's argument is carried by moving, sometimes almost unbearable stories of the victims and survivors of such brutality. Her analysis of U.S. politics what she casts as the State Department's unwritten rule that nonaction is better than action with a PR backlash; the Pentagon's unwillingness to see a moral imperative; an isolationist right; a suspicious left and a population unconcerned with distant nations aims to show how ingrained inertia is, even as she argues that the U.S. must reevaluate the principles it applies to foreign policy choices. In the face of firsthand accounts of genocide, invocations of geopolitical considerations and studied and repeated refusals to accept the reality of genocidal campaigns simply fail to convince, she insists. But Power also sees signs that the fight against genocide has made progress. Prominent among those who made a difference are Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew who invented the word genocide and who lobbied the U.N. to make genocide the subject of an international treaty, and Senator William Proxmire, who for 19 years spoke every day on the floor of the U.S. Senate to urge the U.S. to ratify the U.N. treaty inspired by Lemkin's work. This is a well-researched and powerful study that is both a history and a call to action.
REASON FOR READING: I picked up this book as a resource piece for my thesis.
THOUGHTS: This is the most powerful book I have read in ages. I believe the points, themes, and conclusions that Power writes are not only well written but extremely important as well. Power does not shy away from anything. She takes an instance of genocide and explores it from every angle. She tells the inside story from those who lived, the story of those who committed the killings, those who fought against it, and those who ignored it. Most importantly, she makes it abundantly clear that we (in the West) have seen genocide occur and have ignored it. The entire time she is doing this, she does not make you feel personal guilt. She explains without criticizing and this elevates her argument.
What I liked best about Power's book was the way she told the personal story of genocide. Not only did she include the instances of people who lived through genocide; she also included the personal stories of those who struggled to end the apathy and deliberate political pull away from genocide. I never knew how personal the struggle against genocide became for the people who were in a position of power. The personal stories were illuminating and heartbreaking.
Power's writing is clear, concise, and extremely poignant. She creates fabulous sentences and paragraphs that stick with the reader long after they've turned the page. One sentence, in particular, that has stuck with me is: "But the only noise that could be heard was the sound of machetes slicing their way through Rwanda's Tutsi population."
This is an extremely powerful read that often reduced me to tears. "A Problem From Hell" is an amazing book and one that should be widely read.
MISCELLANEOUS: I would like to see Power update this work to include Darfur.
KEEP/SHARE/CRINGE(?): Keep
RATING: 10/10 [One of the best books I have ever read]
CR: The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory and Compassion Fatigue by Susan D. Moeller
RN: Probably something for school because my semester starts on Monday.
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