Reviews for America and the world, 1898-2025

The average rating for America and the world, 1898-2025 based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-04-26 00:00:00 Kameron Duncan The river in question is spelled "Potomac"

Review # 2 was written on 2015-06-13 00:00:00 Bryon Collier This is a difficult book to read. Both for its content and length. Most books about genocide are difficult, so this is no surprise. I have read extensively about the Armenian Genocide (Meds Yeghern), and the Shoah, or Holocaust of European Jews. These parts of the book added little to my knowledge. But, the rest of the book was very informative and distressing, relaying the stories of genocide after the world had declared "Never again"! These were the stories of the Cambodian, Kurdish, Bosnian, Rwandan, Srebrenica (part of the Bosnian, and Kosovar genocides. The history is made more interesting because these things happened in my lifetime! While I was going about my life, going to school, getting married, and building my career, these slaughters were taking place and being debated and reported on. While I remember bits of some of these tragedies, more about others, I don't remember the details, or what I felt at the time. (I assume horror when the details were finally revealed.) I thus share in the shame of knowing atrocities happened on my watch. I did not protest, write letters, or raise hell! I felt self righteous as I asserted, when reading about the Shoah, that I would have protested, done everything in my power, to make a difference in ending the slaughter. However, I will be one of those future generations will ask about. Why did you do nothing? Very humbling! The rest of the book relates the history of Mr. Lemkin, a Polish Jew, who lost family members in the Shoah, who coined the term genocide, and gave the rest of his life working to see this become an international crime, punishable in International Courts as "crimes against humanity". The United States took over 40 years to ratify this United Nations resolution, long after many other countries had done so. The first case of genocide coming before an international tribunal, after the Nuremberg trials, was that involving the Serbs against Muslims in the 1990s! We read about the foot dragging of the United States, over and over again, through multiple presidencies, and see how the State Departments response to many atrocities, was exactly the same as their response to the Holocaust/ Shoah! I gained respect for some politicians, and lost some respect for others, who looked the other way, even multiple times! The attacks on American soil of 9/11 brought it home in a way like no other. When a group wants to annihilate another group for "who" they are, not for anything they have done, it is Chilling! I will end with a quote from the book, which shook me. She was discussing the Rwandan massacre, explaining that they experienced the equivalent of more than two World Trade Center attacks every single day for 100 days! "When, on September 12, 2001, the United States turned for help to its friends around the world, Americans were gratified by the overwhelming response. When the Tutsi cried out (or the Armenians, Jews, Cambodians, Bosnians, Kurds), by contrast, every country in the world turned away."