What we're reading, what we're liking
A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power
Power, the executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard, has taken on a worthy and admirable task with her latest book, "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide." Power documents how the United States failed to prevent the Turks' systematic slaughter of Armenians, the Nazi Holocaust and acts of genocide in Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda and Kosovo. In some ways, it's an instructive work; Power methodically divides each chapter into the subheads "Recognition," "Response" and "Aftermath." This effective setup drives home, often excruciatingly, the various windows of opportunity that arose to prevent genocide and the sometimes bureaucratic struggles that thwarted America's intervention. But what's even more satisfying about "A Problem from Hell" is that Power, a former Balkan war correspondent, has found new and fascinatingly detailed ways to tell these tragic stories. Mostly, she follows the people behind the policies -- like the Armenian survivor who assassinated a Turkish leader and a Jewish lawyer who conceived of the idea of "genocide" before the Holocaust began -- searching deeper for why the phrase "never again" is one that's still repeated. One of Power's conclusions is chillingly simple: "American leaders did not act because they did not want to ... They were concrete choices made by [America's] most influential decisionmakers after unspoken and explicit weighing of costs and benefits."
-- Suzy Hansen
Recent books praised by Salon's critics
Woman's Inhumanity to Woman by Phyllis Chesler
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Reviewed by Laura Miller
[03/29/02]
Indira by Katherine Frank
Indira Gandhi led the most populous democracy in the world, but finally, ruthless and paranoid, she couldn't resist the temptation of tyranny.
Reviewed by Paul Festa
[03/26/02]
The Disappearing Body by David Grand
A nifty update on the classic noir plumbs an urban underworld of dames, dope rings, double-crossing heavies and poor saps set up to take a fall.
Reviewed by Amy Reiter
[03/21/02]
The Translator by John Crowley
A young woman's doomed affair with an exiled Russian poet takes on mystical undertones during the ominous days of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Reviewed by Laura Miller
[03/21/02]
Violence, Nudity, Adult Content by Vince Passaro
In a satire of paranoid post-Giuliani New York, a lawyer contends with a murderous client, a bisexual stalker and a wife who inexplicably hates him.
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The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus
Two real-life nannies paint a wickedly funny portrait of their pampered charges -- and the kids' even more spoiled and demanding parents.
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[03/21/02]
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Reviewed by Laura Miller
[03/21/02]
Jerusalem Calling by Joel Schalit
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[03/06/02]
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[02/21/02]
Gone by Martin Roper
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[02/21/02]
The Rotters' Club by Jonathan Coe
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[02/21/02]
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[02/21/02]
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[02/21/02]
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[02/12/02]
Rebels on the Air by Jesse Walker
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[02/11/02]
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[02/08/02]
Basket Case by Carl Hiaasen
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[02/05/02]
My Country Versus Me by Wen Ho Lee & Helen Zia
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[01/28/02]
Roscoe by William Kennedy
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The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
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[01/24/02]
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[01/24/02]
The Passion of Artemisia by Susan Vreeland
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[01/24/02]
Servants of the Map by Andrea Barrett
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[01/24/02]
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[01/22/02]
The Dark Side by Mark Schreiber
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[01/16/02]
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[01/10/02]
Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks
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[12/18/01]
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[12/11/01]
The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa
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[12/07/01]
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[12/07/01]
The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer
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[12/06/01]
Half a Life by V.S. Naipaul
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[12/06/01]
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[12/06/01]
He Sleeps by Reginald McKnight
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[12/06/01]
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro
Restless girls and adulterous wives contemplate the bargains they've made with life in these masterly stories by a modern-day Chekhov.
Reviewed by Laura Miller
[12/06/01]
Gabriel's Gift by Hanif Kureishi
Growing up is hard to do when you're the ambisexual son of a pair of washed-up bohemian rock 'n' rollers in contemporary London.
Reviewed by Stephanie Zacharek
[12/06/01]
Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald
A man steps into a deserted room in a railway station and suddenly confronts the riddle of his own past.
Reviewed by Laura Miller
[12/06/01]
A Woman Soldier's Own Story by Xie Bingying
An autobiography of a rebellious Chinese girl who kicked off her foot bindings and an arranged marriage to join the army is available in English for the first time.
Reviewed by Janelle Brown
[12/03/01]
Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens by Patricia Lynne Duffy
For people with synesthesia, letters, words and numbers have their own colors, and you can smell the shape of milk
Reviewed by Alison Motluk
[11/27/01]
Holy War, Inc. by Peter Bergen
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Reviewed by Laura Miller [11/21/01]
Trials of the Monkey by Matthew Chapman
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Reviewed by Damien Cave
[11/20/01]
Look at Me by Jennifer Egan
In this novel about the modern tyranny of image over substance, a fashion model's face is destroyed, then remade.
Reviewed by Amy Reiter
[11/14/01]
Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link
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Reviewed by Laura Miller
[11/08/01]
Political Fictions by Joan Didion
This cool, devastating look at America's empty political spectacles takes apart everything from Reagan's delusions to Clinton's impeachment.
Reviewed by Charles Taylor
[10/24/01]
Our Monica, Ourselves by Lauren Berlant and Lisa Duggan, editors
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Reviewed by Charles Taylor
[10/08/01]
"The Other Wind" and "Tales from Earthsea" by Ursula LeGuin
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Reviewed by Donna Minkowitz
[10/04/01]
Dancing With Demons by Penny Valentine and Vicki Wickham
She drank, took drugs and walloped her (female) lover with a skillet, but Dusty Springfield was the pure, true voice of British R&B.
Reviewed by Stephanie Zacharek
[10/03/01]
The Hidden War: A Russian Journalist's Account of the Soviet War in Afghanistan by Artyom Borovik
Like Vietnam chronicler Michael Herr, Russian journalist Artyom Borovik captured the hallucinatory hell of war -- but these days it's Borovik's account of Afghanistan that seems the most relevant.
Reviewed by Douglas Cruickshank
[09/25/01]
Savage Beauty by Nancy Milford
She bedded countless men (and women) and became the most celebrated woman of her day. She wasn't a rock star -- she was poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Reviewed by Laura Miller
[09/06/01]
The Forgetting by David Shenk
A brilliant and quirky new book on Alzheimer's offers food for thought on the unthinkable and a new, deeper understanding of the coming epidemic.
Reviewed by Pam Rosenthal
[08/30/01]
Beauty and the Beasts by Carole Jahme
Women primatologists braved death threats, rapist orangutans and the twisted mentoring of Louis Leakey to bring us the truth about apes.
Reviewed by Charles Taylor
[08/23/01]
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