Rating: 
Summary: Who Edited This Book?
Review: Gourevitch's book is superbly reported, intellectually challenging, very important, yet remarkably annoying to read. Having struggled half way through "We Wish.." I began to wonder if the book had been edited at all. While I appreciate the importance of preserving the immediacy of Gourevitch's observations, I felt that the lack of editorial input ultimately undermined what could be a far greater book. There are some truly horrendous sentences in this text; I really can't understand how these slipped past his editor. Gourevitch also frequently (and lazily) resorts to a series of hackneyed cliches, which do nothing for the story. I often found it difficult to follow his pattern of thought and sometimes his musings made no sense. Perhaps I'm being too harsh. In sum, this is a fine book. But please, when it's republished, edit the thing, and as someone else suggested, include an index!
Rating: 
Summary: Don't Look Away...
Review: Eight hundred thousand men, women and children were killed in a hundred days in Rwanda in the spring of 1994, most of them in the first 50 days. These killings were acts of incredible violence by otherwise ordinary people, neighbors, friends, co-workers, classmates and sometimes family members of the victims. How could such a thing have happened? The author, a staff writer for the New Yorker, offers as an explanation for why he was so curious about Rwanda, that "The best reason I have come up with for looking closely into Rwanda's stories is that ignoring them makes me even more uncomforable about existence and my place in it." Gourevitch holds that the genocide in Rwanda was not a spontaneous, emotional response to years of bad history, but part of a long and planned out process. This was not a brewing madness that came over the Hutus, nor simply the result of years of disagreements with another race living in the same country. Instead, it was a political plan of the same nature as the Final Solution in Nazi Germany. Although I have listened to, spoken with and even written a little about our Friend, Amminadab Munyaneza (in a local newsletter - Amminadab was in a Master's program in my home town), I never quite understood what had happened in Rwanda. When I saw this book I thought it might offer answers to questions I've had for years. Why do people do such things? What can we do to change the situation? Surely someone must have known what was going to happen. The book was an intriguing, sad and useful read, a mixture of history, true stories including at least one hero, and the author's own outrage. Greed, politics and fear were key components, along with the abandonment of Rwanda by the UN and its supporting countries. I learned a little - I was not aware that the refugee camps Amminidab spoke of held more Hutus than Tutsis (for most of the Tutsis had been murdered), that many of those who committed atrocities were mixed in with those who had not, that the Tutsis who survived sought revenge, often on Hutus who had done no harm, that the murders (Hutus of Tutsis; Tutsis of Hutus) were still going on well into 1998. The recent awareness of problems in Kosovo have made it sadly clear that 'racial cleansing' and genocide are still among us. And so the questions increase. Will Rwanda ever be healed? Will Kosovo? Is it possible for this to happen anywhere? What can we do, can I do? Reading this book did not answer the questions, but it a little clarity to what happened.
Rating:
Summary: History laid bare
Review: The strength in this book rested in its brutally honest portrayal of the Rwandan genocide as seen from many different perspectives: from the general population of Hutus and Tutsi's all the way up to the Vice President of Rwanda, as well as other African and National leaders. These stunning first person accounts were supported by Gourevitch's own observations and his thorough historic research.
Rating:
Summary: I Wish to Inform You -- This is a Great Book
Review: Along with Iris Chang's "Rape of Nanking," this is an extroadinarily well written account of a modern genocide. The events in Rwanda in 1994 are so chilling as to be almost beyond imagination. To add even more heartbreak to this story is the accounts of how after the mass killings the U.N. came in and provided aid--to the killers! Gourevitch's book should be read by anyone interested in what the "New World Order" is really all about. A masterpiece of responsible journalism.
Rating:
Summary: An extraordinary book - vivid, compelling, and eye-opening
Review: I cannot use enough superlatives to review this book. Gourevitch's writing is impeccable, beautiful, and deeply disturbing. The experiences and events he describes are overshadowed in their intensity only by the appalling politics of the international community, and individual acts of courage or cowardice by those who survived the genocide. Reading this book, I realized my own ignorance of the Rwandan crisis where 800,000 died in 100 days, and felt guilt because of that ignorance. It has opened my eyes in the greatest possible sense, and I list it as the most important book I have read in the past few years.
Rating:
Summary: Informative, compelling, sad
Review: I never thought I would be reading a book on Rwanda, but I had to for a class I am taking. I have to say it was one of the best books I have ever read. It gave me so much more information about what was going on and what happened in Rwanda than one could find on the news. I remember hearing about Rwanda when I was a junior or senior in high school, but it was mostly on the refugees. This book gives you the information on what led up to the refugee camps and a little beyond. It does make one cynical, however. There were many times in the book that I would get angry, not only at the genocidaires, but also with the international community. Though it makes one cynical in ways and the author does seem to take a side, he has interviews from both sides. I'll let you read the book and see for yourself. It is excellent reading, I couldn't put it down. It shed so much light on things I couldn't get out of the media.
Rating:
Summary: damning and compelling
Review: Gourevitch is a writer to be emulated. His book on the Rwandan genocide explains, as well as any book, can how the horrors of Rwanda came to pass, and how the cowardice of others kept the massacres going. His prose is reflective and thoughtful, which perhaps seems out of place, given the down-to-earth grisliness of his subject matter. It all works perfetly, though: the book is a story, a tragedy, a polemic and a travelogue, and it is fantastic. Required reading for anyone interested in genocide, East Africa, the UN, international politics.
Rating:
Summary: Gripping, Personal Prose
Review: Don't listen to those chowderheads below: this book is written by a master. Gourevitch clearly sorts out a complex situation with the knowledge of an insider in a language anyone can understand. He speaks personally because the story can't be told objectively- how else could he tackle the deep moral complexities of genocide? The voices of Rwandans cut through just as clearly, if not more so, for his personal observations of their tics and smiles and evasions. I bought this book completely on the quality of the writing on the first couple of pages, and it hasn't failed me yet (I've got a few pages left).
Rating: 
Summary: pretentious and extremely badly written
Review: I think this book got the praise it did because the subject matter is so important. However people should not confuse an important subject with important writing. At times the prose in this enoumously self centered book is so staggeringly bad that it's hard to believe it was published. See a reader from Alaska for a sample. However,the author gets kudos for going to Rwanda and making the world more aware of what was going on. But boy, did he need an editor. By the way, he also refers to himself almost constantly-- I mean who cares?
Rating:
Summary: Maddeningly Turgid
Review: This is a very poorly written book. There is no true sense of organization or central message in the author's writing, which is often so turgid and opaque as to tempt one to give up and move on to another volume. An example (from page 259): "[T]he war about the genocide was truly a postmodern war: a battle between those who believed that because the realities we inhabit are constructs of our imaginations, they are equally true or false, valid or invalid, just or unjust, and those who believed that constructs of reality can--in fact, must--be judged as right or wrong, good or bad." Despite the author's painfully inadequate communication skills, however, the subject matter of this book is so compelling that one hopes it will be widely read indeed. The undertaking will be painful, however--a little like taking a train trip through breathtaking mountain terrain in a dome car with dirty, frosted windows.
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