Pulitzer Prize General Non Fiction Winner
'A Problem from Hell'
by Samantha Power
Summary
A searching account of how successive U.S. administrations responded—or failed to respond—to genocides in the 20th century, from the Armenian massacres through the Holocaust, Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, and Rwanda. Power, then a journalist who had reported from the Balkans, draws on interviews with policymakers and declassified cables to show how warning signs were repeatedly ignored or rationalized away. The book reshaped debates over humanitarian intervention and helped define a generation of American foreign policy thinking.
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Historical Context & Significance
Power was a war correspondent; her book influenced a generation of foreign policy "interventionists" and led to her eventually serving as U.S. Ambassador to the UN.