A Sad Fiasco

A Sad Fiasco
Author: Jonas Kreienbaum
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2019-09-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1789203279

Only in recent years has the history of European colonial concentration camps in Africa—in which thousands of prisoners died in appalling conditions—become widely known beyond a handful of specialists. Although they preceded the Third Reich by many decades, the camps’ newfound notoriety has led many to ask to what extent they anticipated the horrors of the Holocaust. Were they designed for mass killing, a misbegotten attempt at modernization, or something else entirely? A Sad Fiasco confronts this difficult question head-on, reconstructing the actions of colonial officials in both British South Africa and German South-West Africa as well as the experiences of internees to explore both the similarities and the divergences between the African camps and their Nazi-era successors.

Fiasco

Fiasco
Author: Thomas E. Ricks
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 524
Release: 2006-07-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1101201401

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize • One of the Washington Post Book World's 10 Best Books of the Year • Time's 10 Best Books of the Year • USA Today's Nonfiction Book of the Year • A New York Times Notable Book "Staggeringly vivid and persuasive . . . absolutely essential reading." —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "The best account yet of the entire war." —Vanity Fair The definitive account of the American military's tragic experience in Iraq Fiasco is a masterful reckoning with the planning and execution of the American military invasion and occupation of Iraq through mid-2006, now with a postscript on recent developments. Ricks draws on the exclusive cooperation of an extraordinary number of American personnel, including more than one hundred senior officers, and access to more than 30,000 pages of official documents, many of them never before made public. Tragically, it is an undeniable account—explosive, shocking, and authoritative—of unsurpassed tactical success combined with unsurpassed strategic failure that indicts some of America's most powerful and honored civilian and military leaders.

The Herero Genocide

The Herero Genocide
Author: Matthias Häussler
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2021-04-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1800730241

Drawing on previously inaccessible and overlooked archival sources, The Herero Genocide undertakes a groundbreaking investigation into the war between colonizer and colonized in what was formerly German South-West Africa and is today the nation of Namibia. In addition to its eye-opening depictions of the starvation, disease, mass captivity, and other atrocities suffered by the Herero, it reaches surprising conclusions about the nature of imperial dominion, showing how the colonial state’s genocidal posture arose from its own inherent weakness and military failures. The result is an indispensable account of a genocide that has been neglected for too long.

Camps

Camps
Author: Aidan Forth
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2024-06-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1487588305

The concentration of terrorists, political suspects, ethnic minorities, prisoners of war, enemy aliens, and other potentially “dangerous” populations spans the modern era. From Konzentrationslager in colonial Africa to strategic villages in Southeast Asia, from slave plantations in America to Uyghur sweatshops in Xinjiang, and from civilian internment in World War II to extraordinary rendition at Guantanamo Bay, mass detention is as diverse as it is ubiquitous. Camps offers a short but compelling guide to the varied manifestations of concentration camps in the last two centuries, while tracing provocative transnational connections with related institutions such as workhouses, migrant detention centers, and residential schools.

Tree of Smoke

Tree of Smoke
Author: Denis Johnson
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 638
Release: 2007-09-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780374279127

Once upon a time there was a war . . . and a young American who thought of himself as the Quiet American and the Ugly American, and who wished to be neither, who wanted instead to be the Wise American, or the Good American, but who eventually came to witness himself as the Real American and finally as simply the Fucking American. That’s me. This is the story of Skip Sands—spy-in-training, engaged in Psychological Operations against the Vietcong—and the disasters that befall him thanks to his famous uncle, a war hero known in intelligence circles simply as the Colonel. This is also the story of the Houston brothers, Bill and James, young men who drift out of the Arizona desert into a war in which the line between disinformation and delusion has blurred away. In its vision of human folly, and its gritty, sympathetic portraits of men and women desperate for an end to their loneliness, whether in sex or death or by the grace of God, this is a story like nothing in our literature. Tree of Smoke is Denis Johnson’s first full-length novel in nine years, and his most gripping, beautiful, and powerful work to date. Tree of Smoke is the 2007 National Book Award Winner for Fiction.

A Modern History of Forgotten Genocides and Mass Atrocities

A Modern History of Forgotten Genocides and Mass Atrocities
Author: Jeffrey S. Bachman
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2024-11-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1040224903

This is the first textbook of its kind to amass cases of genocide and other mass atrocities across the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries that have largely been pushed to the periphery of Genocide Studies or “forgotten” altogether. Divided into four thematic sections – Genocide and Imperialism; War and Genocide; State Repression, Military Dictatorships, and Genocide; and Human-Caused Famine, Attrition, and Genocide – A Modern History of Forgotten Genocides and Mass Atrocities covers five continents, including case studies from Biafra, Yemen, Argentina, Russia, China, and Bengal. They range from the French conquest of Algeria in the mid-nineteenth century to the Yazidi genocide perpetrated by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria between 2014 and 2017, and show that at times of rising authoritarianism, military conquest, and weaponization of hunger, lines between what is war and what is genocide are increasingly blurred. By including genocides and mass atrocities that are often overlooked, this volume is crucial to the ongoing debates about whether “this atrocity or that one” amounts to genocide. By including key points, events, terms, and critical questions throughout, this is the ideal textbook for undergraduate students who study genocide, mass atrocities, and human rights across the globe.

Proof of God

Proof of God
Author: Ptolemy Tompkins
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2017-09-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1501161563

A Seeker, a Scientist, and the Stunning Answer to the World’s Oldest Question Ptolemy Tompkins, collaborator on the New York Times bestselling Proof of Heaven and Proof of Angels, is at his lowest point, personally and professionally, when he meets with an astrophysicist with a message for the world: God is real, and science proves it. Proof of God is the unlikely story of how this serious scientist and this broken writer, in a series of conversations stretching over several months, come to understand that the universe—from the smallest sub-atomic particles that make up everything in existence to the farthest reaches of the universe—bears evidence of a creator. In short, God not only exists, but science gives us tools to know this. Proof of God shows how science and religion both point to the same stunning and world-changing truth: God is real.

A Most Unsuitable Groom

A Most Unsuitable Groom
Author: Kasey Michaels
Publisher: Kathryn Seidick
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2020-12-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Beware the reluctant bridegroom... Spencer Becket was only eight when he arrived in Romney Marsh as part of the mysteriously displaced Becket family. The son of a seaman and a mother who’d died in childbirth, he grew up longing to be a soldier. His adoptive father reluctantly purchased him a commission, and Spence was off to fight in America, chockfull of passion and ideals. He returned home older, perhaps wiser, but also with one small patch of his memory inconveniently missing. Beware the compromised bride... Mariah Rutledge is the daughter of a British officer killed during a losing battle, and she joins other women and children forced to flee into the swampy forest to avoid capture. For long weeks, she helps care for one of the few wounded soldiers that managed to reach safety. She calms him when he cries out in delirium, presses her body close to his, to warm him as he shivers in the damp chilly nights. He becomes her reason to stay alive, alone, in the wilderness. It is highly possible for a woman in those circumstances to make an emotional mistake. Beware the flames... At Becket Hall, alternately battling and loving each other, Spencer and Mariah unexpectedly discover what appears to be a plot to restore the recently vanquished Napoleon to power in a most unusual way. A deadly way. Bound by the secrets that are all that keep the Beckets safe, Spencer and Mariah must battle the world and their own devils in order to prevent a tragedy ... but will the price for this victory be their very lives?