Rating: 
Summary: A Brutal Problem and the U.N. Deliberates...
Review: With the situation that is now happening in Darfur - Sudanese troops and militias are attacking indigenous tribes, killing men, women and children and burning their villages to the ground, while the United Nations dithers - this recent book has become timely again. "A Problem From Hell" is an angry but well-written book. The author, Samantha Power, was foreign correspondent who covered the war in Bosnia and Kosovo, where the Serbians sought to cleanse the countryside of its Moslem citizens, while the United Nations, the United States and NATO debated. This book was borne out of her anger and frustration at the "civilized world" and its inability to do something to stop genocide, an operation of ethnic cleansing that everyone knew was happening. Power has gone back to the Armenian Genocide, where more than a million Armenians perished at the hands of the Turks, inspired by how little had been said or done about the Armenian Genocide and Diaspora, Hitler and his minions set out to rid the continent of Jews. She also writes about the Pol Pot's Maoist massacre of his citizens, Hussein's gassing and murder of the Kurds. Power is frustrated by the inability of the United Nations and the United Nations to stop the murder. However, one of the difficulties is that the United Nations was designed to confront acts of aggression between countries, not the leaders of a sovereign nation eliminating it's own population. Additionally, the United States is made up with a vast number of nations, including the world's most despotic regimes and each nation has it's own agenda. Just overcoming the inertia of such a bureaucracy is a daunting prospect. So, I don't think the problem of genocide can or will be solved - when it is politically and militarily realistic to do so - by the United Nations. Unfortunately it will probably take unilateral action by the United States or a small coalition in order to do more than count the bodies and this doesn't sit well with the internationalists. Samantha Power's book shows that man's inhumanity to man is and will always be a persistent theme, but that someone has to take a lead at stopping the industrialized massacre of entire populations.
Rating: 
Summary: Belongs in every library
Review: This work should rank among the best books ever written, considering the essential gravitas and relevance of subject matter (Genocide, historical examples, reasons & consequences, connection with terrorism, what could be done), depth and breadth of research, incisiveness and appropriateness of writing style, palpable force of the author's passion and intellect. Some have called this an `angry' work; others may not like it because it does not try to sugar coat the atrocities committed in the name of an ism, religion or political ideology.
Samantha Power focuses the world's attention on the greatest of all crimes-the mass murder of a targeted group of innocent civilians (by race or ethnicity), a crime which did not even have a name until Polish activist and attorney Raphael Lemkin invented the word Genocide about 60 years ago. Power's book succeeds in humanizing the otherwise dreadful subject matter by interspersing stories of unknown acts of heroism such as Senator Proxmire's 17 year attempt (over 3000 speeches often to an empty Senate floor) to ratify the genocide convention.
As many of the 5 star reviewers describe the contents of the book, I will only try to add some flavor to those comments. This book will inform, educate and provide insight into geopolitics in ways that few other books have attempted to do. It helps us to understand how history has been written by the victors, and why accurate accounts of history matter in the conduct of current and future policy and actions. It helps us to raise relevant questions for national and international debate, so that we may not gloss over the most pertinent questions of our age, simply because we do not believe it is in our `national interest' at a particular point in time.
If the purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open mind, this book belongs in every library in the world.
Rating: 
Summary: Good writing but too much history
Review: Ms. Powers writes an excellent book. "A Problem From Hell" chronicles of the worst human rights atrocities in the world since the beginning of the 20th century. On the other hand she goes into great depth on some atrocities and completely skips others; such as East Timor. The first half of the book is clearly a definitive history of genocide including Raphael Lemkin and the formations of the United Nations and the genocide convention. Then the second half dives head first into the Cambodian, Rwandan, and Yugoslavian genocides. While this book is critical of US foreign policy on international human rights, she does surmise that it may have been "the best" policy at the time; tragically as it was. This is an excellent book on the history of human rights protections. Her introduction lays out all of her main points and ideas very clearly so there isn't any guess work or trying to find the point. Definitely worth the read.
Rating:
Summary: Thorough but short-sighted
Review: In "A Problem From Hell", Samantha Power makes an ambitious attempt to analyze a century of Genocide, beginning with the 1915 Genocide of Armenians by the Turks, and ending with the still all-too-recent horrors in Kosovo. She finds the usual suspects, in the form of ruthless dictators and hate-mongers who cynically deny any wrongdoing even as mass graves are dug up, and western politicians who hold the scales of justice in their hands (in the form of modern military forces) but who find their own precious political careers weightier than the lives of thousands--or even millions--of people "over there". She also finds a few unusual heroes, particularly a Polish Jew named Raphael Lemkin with a habit of accosting high goverment officials as they stroll the halls of Congress.
I must give Ms. Power credit for avoiding some of the knee-jerk anti-war attitudes of the contemporary left. No shrinking violet, she clearly advocates the position that it is acceptable--even an imperative--to go to war when the moral cause is compelling. Nor is she in principle averse to using the tools of retail politics. If a western coutry can muster selfish reasons to act on behalf of a moral cause, so much the better.
She falters, however, by not showing how a western politician can make such a decision more palatable to his or her constituents. She musters a powerful argument for the moral need to stop genocide, and to pay a price in blood and treasure to do so, but this is of little practical value in the post-Nazi, post-civil rights era when every politician pays lip service to ending genocide. As such, I am afraid this book must be viewed as merely one of the best in a long series of books whose only real value is to preach to activists for whom genocide is already an overriding concern. Despite an earnest effort, Samantha Power has failed to bridge the gap between activists, and those western leaders who have the muscle to stop genocide, but who also have quite a bit else on their minds.
Rating:
Summary: See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil
Review: In 1994, during the ongoing genocide in Rwanda, Christine Shelley, the Department of State spokesperson, tried to explain the official American view of what was happening in Rwanda. In doing so, she offered one of the most perverse exchanges ever on the issue of genocide: "we have every reason to believe that acts of genocide have occurred in Rwanda." "What's the difference between acts of genocide and genocide?" asked a journalist. "Clearly not all of the killings that have taken place in Rwanda are killings to which you might apply that label"; "how many acts of genocide does it take to make genocide?" the journalist pressed; "that's not a question that I'm in a position to answer."This frustrating exchange, coming more than two months into a genocide that ultimately claimed 800,000 lives, is testament to the pervasive influence that the term genocide has acquired in the public mind. It is also evidence that the long efforts of Raphael Lemkin, who conjured up the concept of genocide in 1933, baptized it a decade later, and converted it into an international crime in 1948, had finally paid off. Lemkin had achieved part of what he dreamed: to create a word that would trigger the imagination and moral outrage necessary to cause good people to prevent such horrific acts of barbarity and inhumanity. Samantha Power, of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, traces the history of genocide in the twentieth century by focusing on how America reacted to the genocides it had to confront in the past hundred years: that in Turkey against the Armenians, in Hitler's Germany, in Cambodia, in Iraq, in Rwanda, and the former Yugoslavia. The book, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003, synthesizes an amazing array of information that together combine for the most authoritative review of the subject. Blending together her journalistic instinct for story-telling, her writer's gift for precision and concision, and her historian's eye, she produces a masterful account that navigates between the human tragedy of genocide and the cold political calculus of responding to it. Her verdict is as indictable as her hope is refreshing. The failure to prevent genocide rests on a complex nexus that leads political reasoning to favor inaction. An inability to imagine how terribly human beings can act when fueled with hatred, a perverse belief that action will do little good, a political calculus that punishes commission more so than omission, and a supposed handicap in obtaining a clear picture of what is happening all conspire to allow American policymakers to rationalize inaction, even when faced with overwhelming evidence that their intervention is essential to save thousands or even millions. But the story is not all depressing. From the Armenian genocide in 1915, policymakers have been willing to stand up and demand that their country act. Sadly, their appeals have been met with little excitement, and often they have proven professionally suicidal. Yet, there is certainly a learning curve; the fear of reliving "another Rwanda," for example, has a powerful institutional influence that may prompt action in the future. What is certain is that if this wholesale tilt in American foreign policy is ever to become a reality, "A Problem from Hell" will have played a major role in bringing it about.
Rating:
Summary: Brutally Honest
Review: A Problem from Hell, written by Samantha Power, delves deep into the flesh of American History. Touching on the many problems in Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Kosovo, Power takes these issues and discusses what America did, or the lack of action, and what the American public has not been aware of. What I found fascinating about this book was not only the hard and stunning facts, yet also Samantha Power's explanation of genocide, and further, what she feels America should do in the future. Her ideas resonated with our current situation in Iraq, and after reading this book it made me think about our place in that situation. Our country has repeated the same mistakes over and over again, and through the many situations where we should have learned our lessons, we have just ignored other calls for help. The quote at the beginning of the book, by Abraham Lincoln, sums up her ideas, "We - even we here - hold the power, and bear the responsibility." Abraham Lincoln knew that with a powerfully growing nation, what comes hand in hand with this power is responsibility. The US has not taken this responsibility, yet when were hit with the devastating loss of citizens in the World Trade Center attack, many countries came to our aid and supported us in our loss, yet when other countries are hit even harder, we sit at the sidelines. This book is riveting and brutally honest, and will open anyone's eyes to the atrocities that our country has committed.
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