The Best Genocide & War Crimes Political Books 2025

1. My War Criminal: Personal Encounters with an Architect of Genocide, Pre-Owned (Hardcover)

Pre-Owned - An investigation into the nature of violence, terror, and trauma through conversations with a notorious war criminal by Jessica Stern, one of the world's foremost experts on terrorism.Between October 2014 and November 2016, global terrorism expert Jessica Stern held a series of conversations in a prison cell in The Hague with Radovan Karadzic, a Bosnian Serb former politician who had been indicted for genocide and other war crimes during the Bosnian War and who became an inspiration for white nationalists. Though Stern was used to interviewing terrorists in the field in an effort to understand their hidden motives, the conversations she had with Karadzic would profoundly alter her understanding of the mechanics of fear, the motivations of violence, and the psychology of those who perpetrate mass atrocities at a state level and who--like the terrorists she had previously studied--target noncombatants, in violation of ethical norms and international law.How do leaders persuade ordinary people to kill their neighbors? What is the ecosystem that creates and nurtures genocidal leaders? Could anything about their personal histories, personalities, or exposure to historical trauma shed light on the formation of a war criminal's identity in opposition to a targeted Other?In My War Criminal, Jessica Stern brings to bear her incisive analysis and her own deeply considered reactions to her interactions with Karadzic, a brilliant and often shockingly charming psychiatrist and poet who spent twelve years in hiding, disguising himself as an energy healer, while also offering a deeply insightful and sometimes chilling account of the complex and even seductive powers of a magnetic leader--and what can happen when you spend many, many hours with that person.

My War Criminal: Personal Encounters with an Architect of Genocide, Pre-Owned (Hardcover)

2. Genocide in International Law : The Crimes of Crimes, Used [Paperback]

The 1948 Genocide Convention has suddenly become a vital legal tool in the international campaign against impunity. The succinct provisions of the Convention are now being interpreted in important judgements by the International Court of Justice, the ad hoc Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and a growing number of domestic courts. In this definitive work William A. Schabas focuses on the judicial interpretation of the Convention, debates in the International Law Commission, political statements in bodies like the General Assembly of the United Nations, and the growing body of case law. Detailed attention is given to the concept of protected groups, to the quantitative dimension of genocide, to problems of criminal prosecution including defenses and complicity, and to issues of international judicial cooperations such as extradition. He also explores the duty to prevent genocide, and the consequences this may have on the emerging law of humanitarian intervention.

Genocide in International Law : The Crimes of Crimes, Used [Paperback]

3. Political Evil: What It Is and How to Combat It, Used [Paperback]

"A timely, eye-opening examination of political evil, a concept widely misunderstood and desperately in need of clarification in our ever more chaotic world. In an age of genocide, terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and torture, evil threatens us in ways radically different from tsunamis and financial panics. Nature unleashes its wrath and people rush to help the victims. Evil shows its face and we are paralyzed over how to respond. It was not always this way. During the twentieth century, thinkers as diverse as Hannah Arendt, Reinhold Niebuhr, Arthur Koestler, and George Orwell made evil central to everything they wrote. Acclaimed political scientist Alan Wolfe argues that in an age of partisan blame-assigning, therapeutic excuse-making, and theological question-dodging, we need to get serious about the problem of evil once again. While there will always be something incomprehensible about evil, we are very much capable of understanding and combating the use of evil means to obtain political ends. Diplomats and politicians with their own agendas ignore this side of evil to grim and often tragic effect. These movers and shakers apply the concept of general evil, seemingly inconquera

Political Evil : What It Is and How to Combat It, Used [Paperback]

4. Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth [Hardcover - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. With 24 pages of photographs

Albert Speer : His Battle with Truth, Used [Hardcover]

5. The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir [Hardcover - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. In 1945, the Allied nations agreed on a judicial process, rather than summary execution, to determine the fate of the Nazis following the end of World War II. Held in Nuremberg, the ceremonial birthplace of the Nazi Party, the British, American, French, and Soviet leaders contributed both judges and prosecutors to the series of trials that would prosecute some of the most prominent politicians, military leaders and businessmen in Nazi Germany. This is the definitive history of the Nuremberg crimes trials by one of the key participants, Telford Taylor, the distinguished lawyer who was a member of the American prosecution staff and eventually became chief counsel. In vivid detail, Taylor portrays the unfolding events as he "saw, heard, and otherwise sensed them at the time, and not as a detached historian working from the documents might picture them." Taylor describes personal vendettas among the Allied representatives and the negotiations that preceded the handing down of sentences. The revelations have not lost their power over the decades: The chamber is reduced to silence when an SS officer recounts impassively that his troops rounded up and killed 90,000 Jews, and panic overcomes the head of the German State Bank as it becomes clear that he knew his institution was receiving jewels and other valuables taken from the bodies of concentration camp inmates. The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials has proven to be a defining piece of World War II literature, an engrossing and reflective eyewitness account of one of the most significant events of our century.

The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir [Hardcover - Used]

6. Eyewitnesses at Nuremberg, Used [Hardcover]

This contribution towards the understanding of the Nuremberg War Trials comprises the memories of guards, secretaries, translators, casual visitors and others for whom Nuremberg was a personal experience rather than a newspaper report.

Eyewitnesses at Nuremberg, Used [Hardcover]

7. The Law of War Crimes : National and International Approaches, Used [Hardcover]

This original and innovative new text on war crimes asks whether we are any closer to achieving the promise of Nuremberg.Interest in the law of war crimes has resurged in the wake of several recent tragedies, including genocide in Rwanda, ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, and Pol Pot's killing fields in Cambodia. The Law of War Crimes is an important contribution in this field of renewed significance for international and domestic law and brings together a group of leading scholars and practitioners in international criminal law. This volume is the first in which a comprehensive analysis is undertaken of the law of war crimes in both national and international contexts.In two introductory chapters, the editors discuss the philosophical and political implications of war crimes jurisprudence as well as the surprisingly rich and unexpected historical record of previous war crimes trials. A sequence of four chapters follows in which legislative and judicial approaches to war crimes in national settings are explored. These essays, on European, Israeli, Australian, and North American war crimes initiatives, contain a mass of indispensable new material and careful legal analysis. The concluding essays focus on war crimes regimes in international law In this section, the authors anticipate future developments, such as the Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the proposed Permanent International Criminal Court, and revisit the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials from a contemporary perspective.

The Law of War Crimes : National and International Approaches, Used [Hardcover]

8. Nuremberg (movie tie-in) [Paperback - Used]

CONDITION - USED - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "From the library of" labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included. "A vivid reconstruction of the actions of the wartime allies and the Nazi elite at Nuremberg. Persico eaily carries us into a deeper understanding of the trials."-- New York Newsday .

Nuremberg (movie tie-in), Used [Paperback]

9. Gestapo Chief : The 1948 Interrogation of Henrich Muller, Volume 2, Used [Hardcover]

Details Soviet penetration of the highest levels of Roosevelt's government, the identity of top intelligence officials who worked with Mller, the US looting of Swiss-held secret bank accounts of both Nazis and Jews, American use of many SS personnel wanted for war crimes and Mller's work with US authorities to liquidate their holdings of stolen art and other treasures.

Gestapo Chief : The 1948 Interrogation of Henrich Muller, Volume 2, Used [Hardcover]

10. The Roots of Ethnic Cleansing in Europe, Used [Hardcover]

Using a new approach to ethnicity that underscores its relative territoriality, H. Zeynep Bulutgil brings together previously separate arguments that focus on domestic and international factors to offer a coherent theory of what causes ethnic cleansing. The author argues that domestic obstacles based on non-ethnic cleavages usually prevent ethnic cleansing whereas territorial conflict triggers this policy by undermining such obstacles. The empirical analysis combines statistical evaluation based on original data with comprehensive studies of historical cases in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Bosnia, in the 1990s. The findings demonstrate how socio-economic cleavages curb radical factions within dominant groups whereas territorial wars strengthen these factions and pave the way for ethnic cleansing. The author further explores the theoretical and empirical extensions in the context of Africa. Its theoretical novelty and broad empirical scope make this book highly valuable to scholars of comparative and international politics alike.

The Roots of Ethnic Cleansing in Europe, Used [Hardcover]