Between vengeance and forgiveness facing history after genocide and mass violence

Synopsis

"Skillfully explores what steps can be taken in the wake of mass atrocities. . . . Incisive and insightful." —Jane Lampman, The Christian Science Monitor The rise of collective violence and genocide is the twentieth century's most terrible legacy. Martha Minow, a Harvard law professor and one of our most brilliant and humane legal minds, offers a landmark book on our attempts to heal after such large-scale tragedy. Writing with informed, searching prose of the extraordinary drama of the truth commissions in Argentina, East Germany, and most notably South Africa; war-crime prosecutions in Nuremberg and Bosnia; and reparations in America, Minow looks at the strategies and results of these riveting national experiments in justice and healing. "Compassionate and well-reasoned. . . . Minow makes a convincing case for the restorative power of speaking about trauma." —Alexandra Starr, Washington Monthly "At the close of this century of death camps, killing fields and desaparecidos, there is perhaps no more urgent question than the one raised in Martha Minow's useful new book: Can societies recover from mass atrocity without falling prey to the legacies of a violent past?" —Marguerite Feitlowitz, DRCLAS News "[An] enlightening exploration of a thorny subject." —Kirkus Reviews