A Problem From Hell Read online

  Praise for

  “A PROBLEM FROM HELL”

  Awards and Accolades

  Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the Best Book in Nonfiction

  Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award

  Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction

  Winner of the National Magazine Award for her Atlantic Monthly article “Bystanders to Genocide”

  Winner of the Raphael Lemkin Award (Institute for the Study of Genocide)

  Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize for the Best Book on American Political or Social Concern That Exemplifies Literary Grace and Commitment to Serious Research

  Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Nonfiction for Contributing to Our Understanding of Racism and Our Appreciation of the Rich Diversity of Human Culture

  Short-listed for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for the Best Book in Current Interest

  Short-listed for the Arthur Ross Book Award for the Best Book in International Affairs (Council on Foreign Relations)

  Short-listed for the Lionel Gelber Prize for the Best Book in International Relations (Munk Center for International Studies, Canada)

  Best-of-the-Year and Notable Lists

  New York Times Book Review

  The Atlantic Monthly

  San Francisco Chronicle

  Washington Post

  Chicago Tribune

  Los Angeles Times

  St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  The Chronicle of Higher Education

  Book magazine

  Ms. magazine

  Raleigh News & Observer

  Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

  Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “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.”

  —Adam Hochschild, Washington Post

  “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.”

  —Jacob Heilbrun, Los Angeles Times

  “Power expertly documents American passivity. . . . This vivid and gripping work of American history . . . gives us a Washington that is vibrant, complex, and refreshingly human.”

  —Laura Secor, New York Times Book Review

  “Nothing less than a masterwork of contemporary journalism. . . . Extraordinary. . . . Everybody in the foreign policy apparatus of the American government must read it. . . . An angry, brilliant, fiercely useful, absolutely essential book.”

  —The New Republic

  “Agonizingly persuasive. . . . The main part of Samantha Power’s extremely important and highly readable book is devoted to the century’s subsequent history of almost unchecked genocide, and the lack of practical response to it, especially in the United States.”

  —Brian Urquhart, New York Review of Books

  “Disturbing. . . . Power’s book 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. It is also engaging and well written. . . . This should be enough to guarantee that it will be widely read by both students and policy makers.”

  —Chaim Kaufman, Foreign Affairs

  “[A] magisterial chronicle. . . . Though clearly imbued with a sense of outrage, Power is judicious in her portraits of those who opposed intervention, and keenly aware of the perils and costs of military action. Her indictment of U.S. policy is therefore all the more damning.”

  —The New Yorker

  “It’s one of those rare books that can change one’s thinking. I think it’s going to have a lasting impact. It’s very painful reading, but it has to be read.”

  —Richard Holbrooke, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations

  “[Power] asks us to consider what the obligations of a democratic world power, empire or no, should be. . . . A gripping work of historical analysis written with much care . . . that will move and outrage any reader.”

  —Matthew Price, Chicago Tribune

  “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.”

  —Steve Kettmann, San Francisco Chronicle

  “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.”

  —Steve Weinberg, Denver Post

  “By building [the cases] into a larger story shaped by a compelling argument, she 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.”

  —Jack Miles, New York Observer

  “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 lives to stop it.”

  —Nan Goldberg, Newark Star-Ledger

  “A superb analysis of the U.S. 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)

  “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)

  “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, and deserves a wide reading.”

  —Siddharth Mohandas, American Prospect

  “Some books elegantly record history; some books make history. This book does both. Power brings a storyteller’s gift for gripping narrative together with a reporter’s hunger for the inside story. Drawing on newly declassified documents and scores of exclusive interviews, she has produced an unforgettable history of Americans who stood up and stood by in the face of genocide. It is a history of our country that has never before been told, and it should change the way we see America and its role in the world.”

  —Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II

  “This is a serious and compelling work, and should be read by policy makers everywhere, before they confront the genocides that are waiting in the wings.”

  —Paul M. Kennedy, Dilworth Professor of History and Director, International Security Studies,
Yale University

  “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, author of We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda

  “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

  “Power gives us the behind-the-scenes story of how and why policy makers made the decisions they did, and she offers recommendations for improving our individual and collective response. This is a moving account of how millions of lives were lost.”

  —former Senate majority leader George J. Mitchell (D.-Maine)

  “Samantha Power has written a much-needed and powerful book exposing our unreadiness to fulfill the commitment implied by ‘never again.’ Her research is pathbreaking; and her writing is lucid, nuanced, and compelling. This is a work of landmark significance.”

  —Aryeh Neier, president of the Open Society Institute and author of War Crimes: Brutality, Genocide, Terror, and the Struggle for Justice

  “Power . . . writes compellingly of the major and lesser massacres of our time. . . . This is a powerful book, and is so skillfully written that at more than 600 pages it still manages to be a compelling read.”

  —John Leonard, New York Newsday

  “A marvelous book. . . . She brings to her narrative the conviction and drive of investigative reporting at its best. . . . She also brings to it the rigour of a scholar trained in law. Many academics have forgotten how to research and tell a story so as actually 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.”

  —David M. Malone, president of the International Peace Academy, The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

  “Make[s] important contributions to our understanding of today’s international turbulence and uncertainty. . . . Fascinating and disturbing.”

  —Stephen Holmes, London Review of Books

  “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.”

  —Derek Chollet, Policy Review

  “Regardless of what one believes about what the United States could have and should have done to stop the killings, Power’s book raises vital questions. It deserves the most serious possible response.”

  —Charles Peña, Reason

  “Power’s critique of American policy is devastating and fully substantiated by the evidence she brings to bear.”

  —Warren I. Cohen, Times Literary Supplement

  “Samantha Power has written a profoundly important book. She revives enduring and troubling questions about government policy toward genocide. We are in her debt.”

  —Emran Qureshi, National Post

  “Power wrote the book to find out why America didn’t respond. And her book is a remarkable effort to answer that question.”

  —Pat Reed, Santa Fe New Mexican

  “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.”

  —Philip Seib, Dallas Morning News

  “‘A Problem from Hell’ forces us to come to terms with the difficult recognition that in many important ways we have all been bystanders to genocide.”

  —Ethics and International Affairs

  “A persuasive and credible history of genocide, accompanied by an eloquent call to action . . . with an impressive touch of sensitivity.”

  —Dennis Lythgoe, Deseret News

  “A magisterial history of genocide. . . . [Power] has found new and fascinatingly detailed ways to tell these tragic stories.”

  —Salon.com

  “A damning indictment of American passivity in the face of some of history’s worst crimes. Power builds her case carefully, sifting through reams of media accounts, interviews, and newly declassified government documents.”

  —Jonathan Tepperman, Newsweek International

  “The myriad horror stories of this age of genocide have many ugly characters, several of whom Power profiles in her well-written and extensively documented book.”

  —Joseph Nevins, The Nation

  “Historical reckoning takes time. . . . Power has pushed that process through sheer personal engagement and intellectual ferocity. Whatever has been written and released, she has read. Whoever might speak, she has spoken to. However we might evade the facts, she has gathered and explained them here. . . . Power’s book should be read cover to cover, literally.”

  —Jennifer Leaning, Harvard Magazine

  “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.”

  —Romesh Ratnesar, Time

  “Magisterial.”

  —The New Yorker

  “Disturbing . . . engaging and well written . . . will likely become the standard text on genocide prevention.”—Foreign Affairs

  “An angry, brilliant, fiercely useful, absolutely essential book.”—The New Republic

  “Forceful. . . . Power tells this long, sorry history with great clarity and vividness.”

  —Washington Post

  “Agonizingly persuasive.”

  —New York Review of Books

  “Avoids partisan finger-pointing [and] is a clarion call for America to remain an engaged moral power.”

  —Weekly Standard

  “Bracing. . . . Power [is] the new conscience of the U.S. foreign-policy establishment.”

  —Time

  “A damning indictment of American passivity in the face of some of history’s worse crimes.”

  —Newsweek International

  “A superb piece of reporting which cumulatively grows into a major political work, part polemic, part moral philosophy . . . Power’s book makes a major contribution to that debate and is required reading for anyone inclined to take part.”

  —The Guardian

  “Substantial and highly impressive.”

  —The Sunday Telegraph

  “Brilliant and angry . . . It makes for shocking, dreadful, compelling reading . . . In short, Power’s work is a master-class of history, law and politics and is a required read for anyone concerned with the prevention of grave human rights abuse.”

  —Amnesty International UK

  “Stunning narrative . . . 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. Washington officials would be wise to heed its lessons.”

  —Hoover Institution

  “Groundbreaking. . . . Power elegantly makes her case.”

  —Newark Star-Ledger

  “Compelling. . . . Power leads her readers on a long and often gut-wrenching journey. . . . Power’s book raises vital questions.”

  —Reason

  “Brilliantly conceived, superbly researched, mixing passion and erudition—it must be placed in the ‘must read’ category.”

  —Denver Post

  “The emotional force of Power’s argument is carried by moving, sometimes almost unbearable stories of the victims and survivors.”

  —Publishers Weekly, starred r
eview

  “A superb analysis of the US government’s evident unwillingness to intervene in ethnic slaughter”

  —Kirkus, starred review

  “[A Problem from Hell] challenges our conscience and should influence what we do in the future.”—Lawrence H. Summers, President Emeritus, Harvard University

  “[Power] is one of the most striking talents to emerge in the human rights field in a long time.”

  —Aryeh Neier, founder of Human Rights Watch

  “One of those rare books that can change one’s thinking . . . very painful reading, but it has to be read.”

  —Former UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke

  “A history of our country that has never before been told . . . it should change the way we see America.”

  —Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt

  “This is a moving account of how millions of lives were lost.”

  —Former Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell

  “A serious and compelling work . . . should be read by policy makers everywhere.”

  —Paul M. Kennedy, author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers

  “Power writes with an admirable mix of erudition and passion . . . [and] focuses fiercely on the human costs of indifference and passivity.”

  —Stanley Hoffmann, Buttenwieser University Professor, Harvard University

  “Samantha Power has written one of those rare books that is truly as important as its subject.”

  —Philip Gourevitch, author of We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families

  “Avoids partisan finger-pointing [and] is a clarion call for America to remain an engaged moral power.”

  —Weekly Standard

  “A superb piece of reporting which cumulatively grows into a major political work, part polemic, part moral philosophy . . . Power’s book makes a major contribution to that debate and is required reading for anyone inclined to take part.”

  —The Guardian

  “Substantial and highly impressive.”

  —The Sunday Telegraph

  “Brilliant and angry . . . It makes for shocking, dreadful, compelling reading . . . In short, Power’s work is a master-class of history, law and politics and is a required read for anyone concerned with the prevention of grave human rights abuse.”