Rating: 
Summary: Haunting and extremely informative
Review: A Problem from Hell gives an indepth historic account of America's role (or lack thereof) in preventing, halting, and punishing genocide in the twentieth century. Well researched, Power brings to light many previously unknown or little known facts and issues in America's foreign policy decisions regarding genocide. This is an area in which America's responses have been severely lacking, and this book truly demonstrates this. Power's style of writing makes for enjoyable read (as much as a book on genocide can be). Highly informative, this will get your blood flowing.
Rating:
Summary: Chastening
Review: This powerful and chastening book is a detailed account of American official responses to the recurrent genocides of the 20th century. Power begins with the slaughter of the Armenians by Turkish nationalists in WWI, goes through the Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda, Saddam Hussein's attack on the Kurds, and the disasters that followed the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Much of the book is a detailed analysis of American response to the more recent events, notably Cambodia, Rwanda, Iraq, Bosnia, and Kosovo. For the sake of completeness, I'd like to mention that Power doesn't cover all the genocides of the last century. The massacres in Burundi and the mass killings in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) are barely mentioned.
What did the US do about these atrocities? The short answer is that US policy has been consistently not to do much of anything about these events. This has been true regardless of which party has been in power and regardless of whether administrations have been relatively liberal or conservative. Even worse, there are several examples of American administrations either implicitly (Cambodia) or explicitly (Hussein's Iraq) aiding governments engaged in genocidal activities. The hypocrisy of several administrations is simply startling and has ironic dimensions. Several important policy makers in the first Bush administration disparaged humanitarianism and support for human rights as appropriate responses to Saddam Hussein's genocidal attacks on the Kurds on northern Iraq. Some of these individuals are now prominent in the present Bush administration and use humanitarian arguments to justify the present Iraq policy. This type of hypocrisy is matched only by the behavior of the Clinton administration during the Rwanda and Bosnia crises. This is a shameful record and many chapters make for very depressing reading.
It appears that it is very difficult to mobilize our system to do much about genocidal events. Kosovo is an interesting counter-example. Only when a number of important Clinton administration policy makers and members of Congress, and public opinion were in favor military intervention was it possible for efforts to be made to intervene successfully. When only a few influential figures are in favor of intervention, it is hard to accomplish much. Senator Dole, in probably the most distinguished episode of his long political career, was an outspoken advocate for the Bosnian Muslims. Despite his considerable influence, there was little support for intervention in either his own party or the Clinton administration for appropriate intervention.
A good part of the book is devoted to the efforts of individuals in the US who attempt to persuade our governments to pursue more aggressive policies towards genocides. What is striking is how isolated many of these individuals become. The obessive Polish-American lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term genocide and worked tirelessly for international conventions against genocide,is the archetype of these individuals. At this death, Lemkin was a penniless fringe figure. What progress we have seen, howwver, is due in large part to the efforts of these quixotic people.
Power ends with a short final chapter that contains some actual policy prescriptions. These are generally sensible, even modest, but hard to implement in our political system. This is not an indictment of Power's suggestions but rather of a political system that doesn't place a great deal of value on human life.
Rating: 
Summary: terrible book that blames the wrong people
Review: This book documents american reaction to genocide in Cambodia, Germany, Rwanda and even Armenia. Instead of laying the blame at the foot of those that allowed it this book wants to blame america for the evils of others. Unfortunatly the authoer doesnt want to offend the loving greeks and reformed germans and instead blames the usual suspect: AMerica.THe book is fallacious and based on false conclusions. The author should have looked at culprits like the French(whohanded over Jews to the Nazis and whose forces did nothing to prevent the slaughter in Rwanda). The book should accuse the world community in its weakness in preventing genocide even though in each of the cases the world knew exactly what was happening. It wasnt a mystery what was happening in Turkey in 1915 or Germany in 1942 or Rwanda in 93 or Cambodia. America was not to blame.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Amazing
Review: I picked up this book and could not put it down. I walked away with so many unsettling thoughts that it kept me awake at night. Why is the church now so indifferent to the victims of genocide when it used to rally around it? Why do we only look at our own domestic interests even when it means death to entire people groups? When are we going to demand our elected representatives to have a global worldview in regards to genocide and start to enforce laws against crimes against humanity? The book is amazing and well written. Everyone needs to read it.
Rating: 
Summary: three things...
Review: I took three big insights from this book. First, that "genocide" had to be defined; although the acts have been around for years, the concept and definition have not. The book is, for the most part, a post-definition study. Second, that although the crime has been named and the international law has been written, enforcing the law is not frequently aligned to the political and economic interests of the US (and the specific people who create its policies). These interests trump international law in our current political structure (as some people would argue they should, state sovereignty being a non-trivial issue). Finally, that it may be possible, although difficult, to pull the lever of US public opinion about genocide. A shift in public opinion would make it politically tenable for elected officials and the state department to take appropriate, effective action in humanitarian crises. The book challenges regular people (like me) to think about writing history in a different way, by reading and voicing our opinions. In short, well worth your time.
Rating:
Summary: Eye Opening
Review: The author presents Genicide Cases since the Ottoman Empire through the slaughter in the Balkans. She clearly presents evidence of how the world continued to be ignorant and unwilling to act. She, perhaps, is too critical of the US in these "non-actions" but not in a disrespectful manner....simply the facts. This book is an eye-opener and should be readby those who may now be critical of taking out ruthless dictators
Rating: 
Summary: A strong but limited argument for intervention.
Review: "A Problem from Hell" is a straightforward condemnation of the US government for inadequately dealing with instances of twentieth century genocide in Armenia, Nazi Germany, Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Kosovo. It is a passionately written and often suffers from an intemperate advocacy that doesn't seriously consider any counter-argument. The legal history of genocide is first reviewed, concentrating on the work of Raphael Lemkin, the lawyer who defined the word. Implicit throughout that which follows is Lemkin's principle that the United States (or any other capable nation) has not only the right but the responsibility to interfere when genocide occurs. Power argues that in every historical instance, the US government did in fact recognize genocide (even if it didn't admit as much) and refused to react adequately, if at all. However, her reliance on international treaties and easy moral outrage makes for a rather weak case, for two reasons. First, the strongly interventionist position is advocated without any serious consideration of the costs. Although she asserts that diplomatic and economic pressures might be effective, it is conceded that most cases would require military force and the deployment of ground troops. At the very least this would lead to American deaths, and in some cases carries that danger of a wider war. Such concerns are generally dismissed as a "realist" stance which needn't be a concern in the face of genocide, although it is acknowledged that NATO intervention in Kosovo has had "mixed" results. The book's second and greater weakness is to place the blame for immoral inaction on top State Department officials and, ultimately, presidential administrations without addressing the public opinions by which they are constrained. The Clinton administration, for example, is faulted for not following through on a promise to act in Bosnia, without noting that this relatively minor (and narrowly targeted) campaign promise would become a major issue if substantial military force later became necessary. Likewise, interventionist State Department officers are depicted as victims of their timid superiors without much explanation of the constraints of public opinion when, in fact, a strong interventionist policy could only have followed if there had been public support. Power's indictment of presidential administrations should really be explicitly extended to the voters who put these folks in power, people who aren't terribly interested in assuming the responsibilities of an international SWAT team.
Rating:
Summary: Provocative, but lags in parts
Review: I was extremely skeptical about Power's ability to create a persuasive thesis in favor of intervention in cases of genocide. Clearly, a moral case exists, and no one questions that. But a government does not function on morals. A government does not have friends, enemies, ideal. A government has interests, and it works to promote those interests in whatever ways that it can. The first couple examples of genocide in the book were cases where a humanitarian intervention to stop the killings would actually have gone against American interests (i.e. Cambodia and Iraq). In these cases, the U.S. government had an interest in the government of the perpetrators of genocide. But Power's thesis really takes on flesh when she looks at cases where American interests actually coincide with the prevention and cessation of genocide. Thus, it is particularly damning that even when in cases where national interests and genocide cessation coincide, the United States still does not become involved militarily. And it is through these case studies Power's statement become crystal clear: The prevention and cessation of genocide in itself IS America's interests, be they geo-political, economic, idealistic, or (god-forbid) moral. If Power is surprisingly persuasive in the defense of her main thesis, she is less so in what the United States should actually do. At times it seems like Power might agree with the United States throwing around military might occasionally to prevent the success of genocidal regimes, a tenet that is hard to swallow. And it does seem to be military intervention that Power promotes. When the U.S. does take steps to affect genocide policies (i.e. sanctions, embargoes, etc), Power invariable deems it a failure, which makes me wonder why she thinks other actions would guarantee success. There is a bit of idealism that borders on naivete. The biggest drawback of this book is that it seems to repeat the same tale over and over again, which I suppose is the point, to show how the U.S. ignored genocide in Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda. But the chapters about each region starts to read the same. Really, I am not sure I would have gotten through the book had I not taken some long rests to break up the repitition.
Rating: 
Summary: What did she think was going to happen?
Review: Samantha Power has written a book about how the US government utterly failed to intervene during numerous occasions of genocide in the last century. Her outline of how the UN definition and legal treatment of genocide came to be formulated is beautifully clear - the hero of this book is Raphael Lemkin, the Jewish refugee lawyer whose dedication to the cause of outlawing genocide made it into an international crime in the first place. However, Power's perspective on the whole subject is bizarrely naive. I speak as somebody whose formal education ended at the equivalent of high school, but I find it difficult to understand how someone so educated and qualified as Power (she teaches human rights and US foreign policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy school of government) could be so weirdly starry-eyed as to apparently believe that it's a scandal that US foreign policy regarding genocide has generally been guided by other than altruistic motives. I mean, maybe I'm too cynical, but what does she think governments are for? Her research seems respectable, but her premise (which, by inference, I take to be that the US government generally wants the best for everyone) is at best debatable, and her overall tone of shocked outrage betrays a sensibility more suited to an ignorant but idealistic teenager, rather than an angry but well-informed expert. (I notice, also, that the general thrust of this book is to condemn the US government for conflicts it didn't get involved in at all. When the US actually gave financial and material support to ethnic violence, as in the cases of East Timor and Palestine, Power is either silent - there isn't a single reference in this book to Israeli policy towards the Palestinians - or else cursory; US support for the genocidal policies of Indonesia towards East Timor is referred to once, on pages 146-147 in the British edition, and then forgotten.) In the end, this book can be useful in that certain facts are grouped together under the one cover. But Power's commentary, her sad-eyed indignation that no more was done, is so utterly jejeune that she shoots herself in the foot. Any state that acts out of what it claims to be morality should be mistrusted. The evisceration of the UN, carried out with such efficiency and brutality by the US and its clients, should have been Power's subject. But she is either too naive or too disingenuous to say so. How this book got a Pulitzer is beyond me, unless the Pulitzer standards have dropped lately.
Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece!
Review: This massively researched and beautifully written book is a masterpiece of a book. Yes, it is difficult to read in places (e.g. what the Serbs or Khmir Rouge did to people) and also maddening (e.g. the do-nothings at the UN &/or the State Dept.) but this book puts the whole history of Genocide into a fascinating read. It is hard to put down, even with the tears and anger. Jon Michael Riley (Aug. 13, 2003)
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