Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur

A book of surpassing importance that should be required reading for leaders and policymakers throughout the world

For thirty years Ben Kiernan has been deeply involved in the study of genocide and crimes against humanity. He has played a key role in unearthing confidential documentation of the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge. His writings have transformed our understanding not only of twentieth-century Cambodia but also of the historical phenomenon of genocide. This new book—the first global history of genocide and extermination from ancient times—is among his most important achievements. Kiernan examines outbreaks of mass violence from the classical era to the present, focusing on worldwide colonial exterminations and twentieth-century case studies including the Armenian genocide, the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin’s mass murders, and the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides. He identifies connections, patterns, and features that in nearly every case gave early warning of the catastrophe to come: racism or religious prejudice, territorial expansionism, and cults of antiquity and agrarianism. The ideologies that have motivated perpetrators of mass killings in the past persist in our new century, says Kiernan. He urges that we heed the rich historical evidence with its telltale signs for predicting and preventing future genocides.

• Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs)
• The Kaiser's Holocaust: Germany's Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism
• The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective
• "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide
• We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda
• Centuries of Genocide
• The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda
• First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers (P.S.)
• Machete Season
• The Historiography of Genocide