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Article: Easier said than done.(A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide)
- Article from:
- Commonweal
- Article date:
- May 3, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Commonweal Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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A Problem from Hell
America and the
Age of Genocide
Samantha Power
Basic Books, $30, 610 pp.
Genocide is the problem from hell. Right behind it is the problem of getting anyone to do anything about it. Samantha Power surveys the horrors of the twentieth century, beginning with the Turkish slaughter of the Armenians in 1915 and ending with Serb efforts to cleanse Kosovo of Albanians in 1998. The bloodshed in the years between--of Jews, of Cambodians, of Iraqi Kurds, of Rwandan Tutsis, and of Bosnian Muslims--offers grim testimony to the truth of her title. But it is the subtitle that shapes her text. For the book is not so much a history of genocide as an ...