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A History of International Human Rights and Forgotten Heroes
In this national bestseller, the critically acclaimed author Peter Balakian brings us a riveting narrative of the massacres of the Armenians in the 1890s and of the Armenian Genocide in 1915 at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. Using rarely seen archival documents and remarkable first-person accounts, Balakian presents the chilling history of how the Turkish government implemented the first modern genocide behind the cover of World War I. And in the telling, he resurrects an extraordinary lost chapter of American history.
Awarded the Raphael Lemkin Prize for the best scholarly book on genocide by the Institute for Genocide Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice/CUNY Graduate Center.
Long before the rise of Hitler and his Final Solution, Ottoman Turkey utilized technology, state bureaucracy, and the military in an attempt to destroy the Armenian people. In this award-winning national bestseller, critically acclaimed author Peter Balakian recounts the massacres of the Armenians in the 1890s and of the Armenian Genocide in 1915, which has been described as a template for all genocides that have followed.
But this is also a story about an extraordinary chapter in American history. From 1890 to the 1920’s, both ordinary citizens and celebrities like Theodore Roosevelt, Clara Barton and Mark Twain joined efforts to try and save the Armenian people. Balakian brings to life both the unspeakable horror in Europe and the birth of the human rights movement in the United States in this wrenching and unforgettable tale. Peter Balakian is the author of Black Dog of Fate, which won the 1998 PEN/Albrand Prize for memoir. He is Constance H. and Donald M. Rebar Professor of the Humanities in the department of English at Colgate University, where he was the first director of the Center for Ethics and World Societies. He holds a Ph.D. in American Civilization from Brown University, and is the recipient of many prizes and awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Anahit Literary Prize. “Richly imagined and carefully documented.” — The New YorkerYou may also like
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