War and Genocide

Reviews / Votes

Doris Bergen's War and Genocide has long served as an excellent introduction to the history of the Holocaust. Clearly and engagingly written, the book combines sweeping historical analysis with insightful stories of how ordinary people experienced these terrible events. This new edition integrates up-to-date research in the field and includes expanded consideration of the Holocaust in comparison with other genocides. -- Alan E. Steinweis, University of Vermont Bergen's outstanding volume on the Holocaust has been made even better in this new edition. The emphasis on genocide as a process that must center on the complexity of humanity itself forms the core critical contribution of the book. To this, Bergen has added rich new materials and sources, including important visual material from Jewish victims and survivors. Her subtle but accessible text remains the model for approaching this difficult history. -- Paul B. Jaskot, Duke University Written by one of the field's leading scholars in a beautiful and easy to read style, this book is remarkably comprehensive, and impressively up-to-date on evolving scholarship. It covers all the important themes and trends in Holocaust history over the last forty years, as well as all of the geographic areas. The book also brings in personal stories of victims and survivors. It makes my class much richer and easier to teach; War and Genocide is beyond compare. -- Laurie Marhoefer, University of Washington In this fourth edition of War and Genocide, Doris Bergen integrates new insights from scholarly research into the Holocaust, making it accessible to a wider readership, and showing how our understanding of this enormous event keeps evolving. In doing so, Bergen broadens the book's geographical scope to include the Middle East; draws revealing links between the Holocaust, colonialism, eugenics, racism, and modern forms of warfare; and gives voice to a spectrum of individual people. A brilliant educator, Bergen thoughtfully and clearly, guides readers to consider how events and individual fates are "similar to, distinct from, and connected to" each other as well as the place of the Holocaust within a broader global human history of genocide. -- Tatjana Lichtenstein, The University of Texas at Austin