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“Power expertly
documents American passivity…This vivid and gripping work of American history…gives
us a Washington that is vibrant, complex, and refreshingly human.”
— New York Time Book Review
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“Forceful…Power tells
this long, sorry history with great clarity and vividness. She is particularly
good at bringing alive various people who were eyewitnesses to these
catastrophes as they were happening and who tried to make Americans share their
outrage.”
— Washington Post
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“Nothing less than a
masterwork of contemporary journalism…An angry, brilliant, fiercely useful,
absolutely essential book.”
— New Republic
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“She has produced a
damning indictment of American passivity in the face of some of history’s worse
crimes. Washington, she charges, has consistently failed to live up to the
promise made at the end of World War II: to never again sit by during a
genocide. In fact, Power argues, the United States has done just the opposite…Power’s
book really serves two important purposes. On one level, it catalogs, in
readable if gruesome detail, the major genocides of the twentieth century. And
on another, it tries to explain what the United Stated could have done to stop the
bloodshed—and why it didn’t. Power builds her case carefully, sifting through
reams of media accounts, interviews, and newly declassified government
documents.”
— Newsweek International
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“Does a masterful job
of conveying important, clear, and faultlessly non-hysterical information and interpretation
on so many dark episodes in recent human history…Power does not preach, and she
does not pontificate. What she does, gently but insistently, is to prod.”
— San Francisco Chronicle
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“Samantha Power has
written a profoundly important book. She revives enduring and troubling
questions about government policy toward genocide. We are in her debt.”
— National Post
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“Superb…A stunning
history of modern genocide that should be read by anyone who makes foreign
policy or cares about America’s role in the world.”
— Dallas Morning News
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“Bracing…One of the
decade’s most important books on U.S. foreign policy…Power [is] the new
conscience of the U.S. foreign-policy establishment.”
— Time
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“Avoids
finger-pointing [and] is a clarion call for America to remain an engaged moral
power.”
— Weekly Standard
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“Her book is one of
those rare volumes that makes news, that is so original on a topic of such
importance that it must be read…Power is such a skillful author—she has
produced a book brilliantly conceived, superbly researched, mixing passion and
erudition—it must be placed in the ‘must read’ category for both misanthropes
and lovers of humanity, for isolationists and internationalists alike.”
— Denver Post
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“[Power] asks us to
consider what that obligations of a domestic world power, empire or not, should
be…A gripping work of historical analysis written with much care…that will move
and outrage any reader.”
— Chicago Tribune
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“Anyone who wants to
understand why America has permanently entered a new era in international
relations must read A Problem from Hell…Vividly
written and thoroughly researched.”
— Los Angeles Times
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“Disturbing…Engaging
and well written…[It] will likely become the standard text on genocide
prevention because it thoroughly debunks the usual excuses for past failures,
while offering a persuasive framework that can help predict future outcomes and
suggest policy responses.”
— Foreign Affairs
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“By building [the
cases] into a larger story shaped by a compelling argument, [Power] takes her
book beyond journalism to something approaching moral and political philosophy…Ms. Power sets this expanded American story within a still larger, more than
American story of the advance of international law. It is here that her book
achieves both its greatest intellectual depth and its most powerful forward
momentum.”
— New York Observer
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“Samantha Power’s
groundbreaking book explores the essential question of why the United States
has so often been slow to respond to clear evidence of genocide…[Power]
elegantly makes her case that U.S. government officials not only knew of the
genocides occurring in Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, and Rwanda, but in some cases
took steps to cover it up, while other heroic individuals were risking their
careers and live to stop it.”
— Newark Star-Ledger
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“A towering history
of the inadequacy of American responses to genocide…The challenge is to make
genocide real for the American public. Power’s own work is an important
contribution to that effort.”
— American Prospect
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“A superb piece of
reporting which cumulatively grows into a major political work, poart polemic,
part moral philosophy…Power’s book makes a major contribution to that debate
and is required reading for anyone inclined to take part.”
— Guardian (London)
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“A marvelous book…She
brings to her narrative the conviction and drive of investigative reporting at
its best…She also brings to it the rigor of a scholar trained in law. Many
academics have forgotten how to research and tell a story to engage the reader.
Power meets this challenge magnificently. This is one of the few key books of
the decade so far, required reading for any student of history, law,
philosophy, or foreign policy.”
— Globe and Mail (Toronto)
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“Make[s] important
contributions to our understanding of today’s international turbulence and uncertainty…Fascinating
and disturbing.”
— London Review of Books
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“Samantha Power has
written one of those rare books that will not only endure as an authoritative
history but is a timely and important contribution to a critical policy debate.”
— Policy Review
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“Power’s critique of
American policy is devastating and fully substantiated by the evidence she
brings to bear.”
— Times Literary Supplement (London)
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“Samantha Power has
written a much needed and powerful book exposing our unreadiness to fulfill the
commitment implied by ‘never again.’ Her research is path-breaking; and her
writing is lucid, nuanced, and compelling. This is a work of landmark
significance.”
— Aryeh Neier, president of Open Society Institute
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“Samantha Power has
written one of those rare books that is truly as important as its subject. With
great narrative verve, and a sober and subtle intelligence, she carries us deep
behind the scenes of history-in-the-making to map the gray zones of diplomatic
politics where the rhetoric of best intentions founders against inertia and
inaction.”
— Philip Gourevitch, award-winning author of We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories From Rwanda
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“American officials
have been highly inventive in finding arguments not to breach sovereignty and
engage in common action to stop genocide. Timidity and tradition have resulted
in endless horror and terror. Samantha Power writes with an admirable mix of
erudition and passion, she focuses fiercely on the human costs of indifference
and passivity, and she instills shame and dismay in the reader.”
— Stanley Hoffmann, Buttenwieser University Professor, Harvard University
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“A superb analysis of
the US government’s evident unwillingness to intervene in ethnic slaughter…A
well-reasoned argument for the moral necessity of halting genocide wherever it
occurs, and an unpleasant reminder of our role in enabling it, however
unwittingly.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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“The emotional force
of Power’s argument is carried by moving, sometimes almost unbearable stories
of the victims and survivors of brutality…This is a well-researched and
powerful study that is both a history and a call to action.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)