A must read.

Power's book argues for US intervention to stop genocide. It's interesting because the foreign policy arguments I tend to agree with are arguing against the U.S. projecting its military power, so it really challenged my thinking on that. Apparently she was appalled when the neo-cons used her arguments to justify invading Iraq.

It's also a good, if selective, history of the Balkans Wars in the 1990s.

My main complaint about this book was that I already read a book about Rwanda.

This book was a serious, but very easy to understand, read. I say it was tough, but it is not necessarily the writing, more the subject matter. It is hard to read about genocide no matter how nicely it is written about.

I thought this book was a great overview of how US foreign policy has reacted to genocide in the last century, and how each subsequent crisis has shaped how we look at the future. It was well written and worth all the time I spent reading it.

This drops down to a four only because I started spacing out during some of the Kosovo section, but that may have been the result of my own lifestyle at the time. A thorough examination of the major genocidal actions of the 20th century and what led to our involvement (or, more often, lack thereof) in each. Highly recommended.

A book that was definitely worth reading, but so brutal to read. Took me 13 months to finish. At times hard to read more than a couple pages at a time, at times just took weeks to months off reading it. An important reminder/learning of the failures of US and World foreign policy since World War II. This book came out first in 2002, but in the 22 years since I am skeptical that much has truly changed, and looking at the world today makes me feel even more confident in that assessment.

Daunting in its size and scope, but essential reading for understanding one of the most pressing humanitarian issues of this era.

This book is a heavy read, literally and figuratively. It's more than 500 pages and recounts notable horrors of the 20th century and worse, how the world largely did not act promptly and intervened to stop them.

Samantha Power first writes about the origin of the word 'genocide' and how a Polish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin coined the word after learning about the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces in the early 19th century. At the time, there was no existing word that could encompass how a million Armenians were subjected to torture, rape, mass deportation, and killings. The word came in handy decades later to describe the Holocaust which made many nations agree that genocides should never happen again. It still did.

The book details genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Iraq, and the former Yugoslavia (specifically in Bosnia and in Kosovo) and how the United States and its allies chose not to act directly to stop them which could have saved many lives. We are guided into the hallowed halls of American foreign policy and the many reasons and justifications policymakers gave to support their inaction (little to no American interest, the cost of doing is more than doing nothing, 'genocides' were internal conflicts). American leaders did not lack the knowledge and the awareness and the means but the killings continued with impunity.

My main takeaway after reading this book is that we may really be on our own. In times of need and despair, we could not really count on institutions created to ameliorate our concerns (hi, UN!) and on other countries which may not have our plight as one of their concerns. I may not be an expert in foreign policy but I think countries should support one another in times of need. Donations flood during calamities and I hope the same concern and help would still flood in times of ethnic cleansing and mass killings.

Rather than looking at the particulars of one genocide, Power sets those of the past century in front of you, one after the other, drawing threads between them, comparing personalities and circumstances to arrive at a conclusive understanding and plea for humans to do more. It's written in a journalistic style, so it's never boring (though it's often difficult). I came away from this with a very clear picture of how ideas about genocide have been interpreted since the early 20th century and how our current system for holding both purpetrators and those who stand by, accountable, is still incredibly inefficent and paralyzed by politics, considering all our lipservice to not letting something like the holocaust happen again.