Politics and World Affairs
Book Details

Blood and Soil

A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur

Ben Kiernan

The first global history of genocide and extermination from ancient times to the present

Awards

Blood and Soil won the 2008 gold medal for the best book in the History category, awarded by the Independent Publishers association (Los Angeles, May 30, 2008).

Opinion

"Far-reaching and detailed."
- P.J. Urth, Bloomsbury Review

"As a narrative history it is well-written, impressively researched, and affords many useful comparative insights. . . One of the book's great strengths is its truly global sweep. . . One of the services the book performs is to highlight the ubiquity of mass killings in human history. . . Along the way, there is much revelatory, intriguing and disturbing information to be gleaned. . . Thorough though he is in cataloguing this history of horrors, Kiernan is careful to draw distinctions among various scales of killing and diverse forms of motivation."
- Aviel Roshwald, Nationalities Papers

About this Title

For thirty years Benedict 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.

About the Author

Benedict F. Kiernan is the Whitney Griswold Professor of History, Professor of International and Area Studies and Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University.
Professor Kiernan obtained his PhD from Monash University in 1983. He is the author of, among other books, How Pol Pot Came to Power: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Communism in Cambodia, 1930-1975 and The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979, both published by Yale University Press. He has published numerous articles on Southeast Asia and the history of genocide.
He is a member of the editorial boards of Critical Asian Studies, Human Rights Review, The Journal of Human Rights, Zeitschrift für Genozidforschung, and The Journal of Genocide Research.

978-0-522-85477-0