Book Description
Since the Holocaust, it has been almost impossible to hide large-scale crimes against humanity. In our communicative world, few modern catastrophes are concealed from the public eye. And yet, Ilan Pappe unveils, one such crime has been erased from the global public memory: the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948. But why is it denied, and by whom? The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine offers an investigation of this mystery.
Customer Reviews:
Yet ANOTHER CASE of JEWISH SAVAGERY and HUMILIATION towards the"PALESTINIAN HOLOCAUST.".......2007-10-02
You will have to stop reading at times to wipe the tears coming from your eyes like Niagara Falls. Get a huge box of tissues for this gut-wrenching story of the daily brutal, humiliating and savage treatment against the women and children of Palestine. I started reading about the fate of the Palestinians with Carters book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Carter's book is a great and objective overview of the Palestinians Holocaust. Bush, Rice and Cheney will be rightfully humiliated in History books and in posterity for turning their backs and 'allowing' these atrocities to go on and on and on.... Right now as you read this review, The Palestinian Holocaust is in full terror. I'm 'not' giving up on the idea, that America will soon be "Good 'ole America again." Read this book.
What the U.S. Press Refuses to Show.......2007-09-30
A clear and concise view of the Palestinian holocaust, a view that the American media refuses to show.
Unspeakable evil finally expressed in words.......2007-09-26
The unspeakable evil that has been committed against the Palestinian people in 1948, and the unspeakable evil that is still being committed against the Palestinian people, has at last been expressed in words.
Amidst the vast zionist propaganda machine created to cover up horrendous atrocities, at last we have a book that gives us the truth. This book, with all its shocking details, is the best book I have read on the Palestine/Israel conflict, though it made very grim and painful reading. Ilan Pappe has given the world a wonderful gift in the writing of this book, one that could play a major role in bringing world peace, once all the facts that Pappe presents are known. His sources include the Israeli Archives and Ben Gurion's diaries, as well as eye witness accounts of what happened in 1948, and is continuing today.
If anyone wants to know what the conflict in the Middle East is all about, just read this book; every member of Congress, and every member of the general public should know how our billions of tax dollars that we send to Israel each year are being spent.
History you Must Know.......2007-09-15
If you have not read ETHNIC CLEANSING OF PALESTINE you do not know the history of Palestine, nor can you understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As part of a new group of Israeli historians, Ilan Pappe reveals previously secret Israeli documents. The cleansing of Palestine of its Arab inhabitants began long before 1948, and continues today. Step by step the plans to cleanse the land, and the entire infrastructure with the cleansing details -- 1927 land surveys, The Red House, the Consultancy, Plan Dalet, Plan D -- is spelled out by Pappe. This is a painful read, but a necessary one to understand the Middle East.
Honest & Excellent.......2007-09-14
Very excellent book that shows part of the sufferings of Palestinians written by a very honest person
Book Description
A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist exposes the secret history of racial cleansing in America
"Leave now, or die!"
From the heart of the Midwest to the Deep South, from the mountains of North Carolina to the Texas frontier, words like these have echoed through more than a century of American history. The call heralded not a tornado or a hurricane, but a very unnatural disaster--a manmade wave of racial cleansing that purged black populations from counties across the nation.
We have long known about horrific episodes of lynching in the South, but the story of widespread racial cleansingabove and below the Mason-Dixon line--has remained almost entirely unknown. Time after time, in the period between Reconstruction and the 1920s, whites banded together to drive out the blacks in their midst. They burned and killed indiscriminately and drove thousands from their homes, sweeping entire counties clear of blacks to make them racially "pure." The expulsions were swift-in many cases, it took no more than twenty-four hours to eliminate an entire African-American population. Shockingly, these areas remain virtually all-white to this day.
Based on nearly a decade of painstaking research in archives and census records, Buried in the Bitter Waters provides irrefutable evidence that racial cleansing occurred again and again on American soil, and fundamentally reshaped the geography of race. In this groundbreaking book, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Elliot Jaspin has rewritten American history as we know it.
Customer Reviews:
Leave now, or die.......2007-10-13
Elliot Jaspin does a superb job of uncovering the hidden history of about a dozen American counties where the white citizens used violence and the threat of violence to force their black neighbors to move out of the county. It's ugly history that many white people might be reluctant to hear about, which is why it's been hidden for so long. But Jaspin tells the stories with a compelling and passionate voice that makes for very accessible and important reading for anyone who cares about the American history of race.
However, this book is not only about history. In his final chapter, Jaspin, who researched this history for both this book and a series of newspaper articles, recounts the struggles over the publication of the newspaper articles. This chapter shows that the impulse to keep the hidden history hidden is still strong -- for example, by resisting the term "racial cleansing" and holding to the legend (that Jaspin refutes) that the black people were generally compensated for their loss of land and property. This final chapter ends on a hopeful note with a story of truth and reconciliation that shows that the truth can lead to healing.
I encourage anyone interested in the American history of race to read this important book.
Goosebumps, Passing Darkness, Wish to See Light.......2007-06-27
I wish I could say that I cried over this book, but the truth is that I am so accustomed to America's legacy of genocide, social injustice, and external fraud, regime change, and invasion that I simply sighed and thought, "wow, about time this came to light."
This is a stunning book that should be read by every American of every race, creed, and class.
I previously reviewed a book today that discussed how white supremacy views were one of the causes of the downfall of democracy after the Civil War. I believe this. As a Marine, I learned there are only Marines, some dark green, some light green. That lesson has NOT been learned by all Americans, and that is one reason I favor a restoration of universal national service (including two years for any immigrant granted citizenship, at any age), with the option of armed, peace, or homeland service.
I am Latino by culture, white by race, intelligent by design (pun intended). I believe that America genocided the native Americans, genocided the people of color, and is now in the process of disenfranchising the Latinos while making commons cause with the Asians. None of this bodes well for a Republic that is supposed to offer Liberty & Justice for all as the foundation for collective intelligence and the sovereign We the People.
The Constitution has been trashed by Dick Cheney and his neo-conservative and Christo-fascist supporters, and it is high time someone stood up and said ENOUGH--we must make common cause with the people of color, embrace their leaders, both self-selected and elected, and MOVE ON beyond the corporate socialism and the corrupt political party environments that have broken the middle class and impoverished the working ppor--which the author of the book by that title points out, should be but is not an oxymoron.
This is an important book. I hope it shames some, causes dispair in others, and that overall, it rises to be a liberation manifesto, a starting point for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission within America, to reveal, curse, and forgive all that has been done to the people of color on the assumption, the grotesque assumption, of white supremacy.
I share Martin Luther King's dream, and I am committed to seeing it fulfilled.
Semper Fidelis,
Robert Steele
Bonhoeffer
Improper behavior
The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America (Galaxy Books)
Al On America
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America
The Color of Fascism: Lawrence Dennis, Racial Passing, and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism in the United States
Uncovering Hidden Treasures.......2007-04-10
Jaspin should be commended for telling the stories of these towns, even when the information concerning these incidents is scant. Buried in the Bitter Waters serves as a reminder to its readers that racial cleansing in America took place throughout the country, not just the Deep South. It also reminds us that much of the history of our country has yet to be told. Selma, Birmingham, Memphis, and Montgomery are familiar names in the history of race in America. Jaspin shines the light on towns like Corbin and Commanche, not to disparage them but to remind us that the racial clensing in America was widespread.
DEEPLY MOVING AND FACTUAL.......2007-03-06
Regrettably, there is a great deal in our country's history of which we are now ashamed. Surely the years between 1874 and the 1920s in America saw some of the most deplorable events. During that period of time racial cleansing took place over a wide geographical area. This was cruel, senseless and more to our disgrace these actions were condoned at the time and glossed over today.
Author Jaspin is twice a Pulitzer Prize winner, and is a reporter for Cox Newspapers. Years of prodigious research were poured into his book which presents clear evidence of what took place. Yet we hear of what was an apparent whitewash by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "Editors ignored clear conflicts of interest while editing the racial cleansing series. Procedures designed to protect the integrity of the reporting process were dispensed with. And finally the head of the company's newspaper division overrode the judgment of editors in Austin and Washington and ordered that a different term be substituted for 'racial cleansings.' It is a cautionary tale about the lingering shame that trumps honest discussion of the full history of America's racial cleansings."
How sad that racial cleansing did occur - sadder yet that some will not acknowledge our misdeeds.
The apt title for Jaspin's book comes from the pen of Zora Neale Hurston: "Ah done died in grief and been buried in de bitter waters, and Ah done rose agin from de dead lak Lazarus. " For those who heard "Leave now, or die!" their lives were overturned in mere hours as they fled carrying what possessions they could. Those were the lucky ones - countless others were killed, their homes burned as blacks were driven from entire counties. Thus, even today some of these areas are still "lily-white."
According to the courts blacks were not considered citizens. Thus, it was quite literally leave or die. Jaspin bases his information on countless interviews, census records, and archives. It is a tragic story but a true one.
Actor Don Leslie offers an accomplished reading of Buried in the Bitter Waters, clearly stating facts and movingly relating the words of those interviewed.
Highly recommended.
- Gail Cooke
Book Description
Of all the horrors of the last century--perhaps the bloodiest century of the past millennium--ethnic cleansing ranks among the worst. The term burst forth in public discourse in the spring of 1992 as a way to describe Serbian attacks on the Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina, but as this landmark book attests, ethnic cleansing is neither new nor likely to cease in our time.
Norman Naimark, distinguished historian of Europe and Russia, provides an insightful history of ethnic cleansing and its relationship to genocide and population transfer. Focusing on five specific cases, he exposes the myths about ethnic cleansing, in particular the commonly held belief that the practice stems from ancient hatreds. Naimark shows that this face of genocide had its roots in the European nationalism of the late nineteenth century but found its most virulent expression in the twentieth century as modern states and societies began to organize themselves by ethnic criteria. The most obvious example, and one of Naimark's cases, is the Nazi attack on the Jews that culminated in the Holocaust. Naimark also discusses the Armenian genocide of 1915 and the expulsion of Greeks from Anatolia during the Greco-Turkish War of 1921-22; the Soviet forced deportation of the Chechens-Ingush and the Crimean Tatars in 1944; the Polish and Czechoslovak expulsion of the Germans in 1944-47; and Bosnia and Kosovo.
In this harrowing history, Naimark reveals how over and over, as racism and religious hatreds picked up an ethnic name tag, war provided a cover for violence and mayhem, an evil tapestry behind which nations acted with impunity.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent and overdue.......2005-10-01
Despite its considerable faults, this book is a terrible indictment of our common humanity. Much of it traverses well-trod ground such as the Armenian and Jewish genocides and the more recent wars of the Yugoslav succession. Other chapters deal with the expulsion of the Greeks from Anatolia and the Soviet deportation of the Chechens-Ingush and the Crimean Tatars.
The book's strongest chapter chronicles the post-war expulsion of German civilians from Poland and Czechoslovakia, where German girls and women were routinely raped by their former neighbors and where the Soviets, who were notorious rapists themselves, were welcomed as comparative saviors by the Germans. The Germans of Bohemia, Silesia and Sudetenland are compared to the Jews caught between the marauding armies of Hitler and Stalin as they carved up Poland. Neither group knew where to go. Many ended up dying in concentration camps, robbed, humiliated and finally murdered. There is little to be proud of and much to be ashamed of in robbing, raping, humiliating and murdering unarmed women and children.
Naimark speaks of Serbs being ordered to rape Muslim women and Wehrmacht soldiers looking on with smirks on their faces as their Lithuanian, Ukranian and Latvian allies raped Jewish women. Naimark tells us of Polish, German, Czech and Turkish concentration camp guards going beyond rape and revelling in all kinds of unspeakable cruelties on their defenseless charges
Why do men do such things? Naimark, a Harvard University history professor, trots out a few glib sociological reasons. He blames conniving politicians, people like Hitler, Slobodan Milosovic and their cronies, people like the SS and Arkan's Serb Tigers. That, like most of the book, is too simplistic. The truth is that all of us are to blame. All of us are guilty. Good Samaritans, as this book makes plain, are a rare commodity when the dogs of war are let loose. Most of us prefer the sports pages to accounts of what the Hutus and Tutsis are doing to each other. They have lost their novelty value for us. Because their crimes are no longer novel, they no longer attract our attention. And even if they did, what would we do? Probably, if the evidence is anything to go by, nothing.
Naimark makes the point that the Armenian genocide was proclaimed in headlines around the world. Hitler's antipathy to the Jews was hardly a state secret. Stalin is one of history's greatest mass murderers and his treatment of the Chechens and Tatars could hardly have come as a surprise to anyone familiar with his ways.
The role of Winston Churchill and other Western leaders is less familiar. Naimark mentions how Churchill and Stalin briefly discussed the plight of the Sudetenland Germans; Churchill was willing to see two million of them die and the rest shoved into an impoverished Bavaria. In less than a minute, these two same men assigned Yugoslavia to the Soviets in return for Greece remaining within the British sphere of interest. The fates of millions didn't cause either of them to lose any sleep. Nor have the Germans or the Austrians lost much sleep over their cynical involvement in the carve-up of Yugoslavia.
We probably don't lose too much sleep either about these disputes in far-off European lands of which we know so little. That, of course, is the problem. For evil to triumph, it is just necessary for good people to do nothing. That, in a nutshell, has been the lesson both of Europe in the twentieth century and of this disturbing book, which reminds us of one of Europe's most permanent and invidious cancers.
The issue of preventable cancers is now back on the agenda as the world's press belatedly considers the use of depleted uranium against the Serbs. In the end, cancers and hatreds seem to be war's only legacies and our only common inheritances. Surely, as we go into a new millennium, we should be able to do better than to hate, rape and kill. This book suggests otherwise. Although many idealists may believe that peace is worth dying for, this book shows that many of the less idealistic believe that faith, fatherland and material advantage are all worth killing for. Rape, gang rape and rape murder were part of everyday life. Postscript: I air many of these issues in my new book.
Interesting with lumping.......2005-03-30
This book is a good rundown of tragedies that befell people in Europe in the 20th century, and especially it is important that it reminds us of the Armenian genocide and the Greek catastrophe. However there exist two major problems with this text. The first is the use of the word 'ethnic cleansing' a term coind by americans to excuse the was in Bosnia and Kosovo, it was a term that was sopposed to embody racism and remind us of the Holocuast. However the term is disengenous and inaptly applied. Their is a difference between genocide and ethnic cleansing and their is a difference actually between ethnic cleansing and what happaned in Kosovo. No ethnicity was actually cleansed in Bosnia or Kosovo, rather religions assaulted eachother, same ethnicity, different religion.
The Armenians genocide and the Holocaust do not even compare with the Bosnia conflict. And Stalins deportation of the Ingush and Chechans, a truly ethnic cleansing operation, also is incomparable.
The second flaw is that huge tracts of cleansing are missed in this account. What of the pogroms and slaugthers that befell minorities in 1913, and again in the 1920s as maps were redrawn? What of the population transfers in Cyprus? What of Stalins genocide of the Russian Poles and Germans and many other peoples?
This is a worthwhile account but the reader must be cautioned to know that these incidents are very different, and that not every case of european 'cleansing' is brought to the surface here.
Seth J. Frantzman
great resource on some of the worst acts of the 20th century.......2002-03-11
Fired of Hatred tells of the history of genocide, ethnic cleasining and forced deportation of ethnic groups in the 20th century. It deals with Nazi Holocaust, the most famous case of 20th century genocide and provides information that people might not know like how the Third Reich considered plans to move Jews to modern-day Israel and other locations like Madagascar. It also deals with genocide in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s which is still fresh in people's minds and helps to show the idea of 'never again' mentioned at the end of the second world war never fully materialized. One of the strong points of fires of hatred is that it sheds light on lesser known examples of genocide in the 20th century like that of the Greeks and Armenians in the Ottaman Empire and the treatment of Germans in Poland and Czechoslovakia after the end of the second world war. It also deals with how the U.S.S.R brutally treated Chechnya an important section to better understand the current conflict in that region.
My only problem with the book is that it doesn't cover enough. It does a good job of covering what it has but neglects important things like the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 which was a large scale.
A Tour de Force.......2001-02-10
Naimark's work is tour de force bound to brew controversy among policymakers and historians alike. This is a vital contribution to the burgeoning literature on nationalism...the consequences. Bravo.
Book Description
This comprehensive study of international ethnic cleansing provides in-depth coverage of its occurrences in Armenia, Nazi Germany, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda, as well as cases of lesser violence in early modern Europe and in contemporary India and Indonesia. After presenting a general theory of why serious conflict emerges and how it escalates into mass murder, Michael Mann offers suggestions on how to avoid such escalation in the future. Michael Mann is the author of Fascists (Cambridge, 2004) and The Sources of Social Power (Cambridge 1986).
Customer Reviews:
Case Unproven.......2005-05-07
The great merit of this somber book is that it matter-of-factly includes the Armenian genocide along with the Holocaust as the two most important case studies that Mann examines. The two cases are linked by more than Hitler's infamous remark just before launching Operation Barbarossa "Who now speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians?" The Turkish genocide of the Armenians was also perpetuated by the leadership of a modernizing State, in the context of war, using its organizational and administrative resources to their fullest capacities in an attempt to murder as many members of an entire people as possible. For some reason, it does not sit well with many Holocaust scholars to refer to the tragic pioneering suffering of the Armenians at the hands of the Turks and their allies as genocide, but that was what it was. Mann acknowledges the similarities between the Armenian and Jewish experiences in this book, although he does not demonstrate particular insight into the events that produced the Armenian genocide. Nevertheless, in the prevailing climate of intellectual opinion, which forbids scholarly reference to the mass murders of the Armenians as a genocide, Mann's book constitutes a long step in the right direction.
Mann's two main theses are (1) that ethnic cleansing and genocide are, as his title indicates, "the dark side of democracy", and (2) that genocide and ethnic cleansing often develop their full-blown features as a series of immediate "solutions" to perceived obstacles or frustrations, they are not meticulously planned in advance with their ultimate goal clearly in view.
Despite the scholarly introductory chapter with its elaborate chart depicting Mann's theses (down to parts 4a, 4b, 5, etc.), Mann utterly fails to demonstrate the validity of his first thesis. On the face of it, the fact that his two principle examples, the Armenian and Jewish genocides, were perpetrated by Turks and Germans acting in the context of authoritarian dictatorships makes his case difficult to prove. While there is something in the idea that democracy can be confused with ethnicity, Mann can only show that this factor is at best a contributing one. Readers looking for a jaundiced view of the cruelty of which democracies are capable should read Jacob Burckhardt's THE GREEKS AND GREEK CIVILISATION; this book is the English translation of university lectures that poisoned at least two generations of Germans against the idea of liberal democracy, with catastrophic consequences. The German experience shows just how dangerous Mann's project really is. To say that ethnic cleansing is the "dark side" of democracy is a powerful indictment of democracy, and, given that he doesn't prove his thesis, Mann appears to have brought the charge recklessly. Hopefully, his book will have little of the influence on English-speaking readers that Burckhardt's did on German-speaking readers.
Mann does succeed in demonstrating his second main thesis which, if widely accepted, provides a framework in which policy tools can begin to be developed to try and prevent future genocides. Of course, the classic statement of this thesis was Arno Mayer's WHY DID THE HEAVENS NOT DARKEN? This great book was heavily criticized by some Holocaust scholars who thought that they saw an exculpatory element in Mayer's assertion that the killing of 6 million Jews was not planned by the Nazis from the very beginning. As a matter of fact, both Mayer and Mann show amply that the "contingent" and evolving nature of most genocide is as evil and cruel a human activity as it is possible to imagine. There is no point scanning the horizon for a government busy creating a fully articulated vision of extermination, because that's not how genocide develops. And for pointing to that truth, this book, for all its flaws, is worth a read by those seeking to understand this grim subject.
Fair book, interesting thesis, but read his "Fascists" first.......2005-05-05
I liked this book, and found it to be a nice companion piece to Mann's book on fascists. In fact, I would say these two books are really best seen as two volumes of a single work on the forces that create and sustain organic nationalism, and then propel it down the path of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Is this specific work and the larger treatise on organic nationalism flawed? Yes, of course, every scholarly work is inherently flawed and incomplete -- experts on genocide will no doubt nit-pick his details here. But taken together Mann presents two works that are fairly compelling.
What I did find valuable in this book, however, is his argument that ethnic cleansing is the "dark side" of democracy. What does he mean by this? He states it pretty unequivocally on page 2:
"Let me make clear at the outset that I do not claim that democracies routinely commit murderous cleansing. Very few have done so. Nor do I reject democracy as an ideal - I endorse that ideal. Yet democracy has always carried with it the possibility that the majority might tyrannize minorities, and this possibility carries more ominous consequences in certain types of multiethnic environments."
Thus, Mann maintains that genocidal, murderous cleansing is the "dark side" of democracy because before the modern conception of democracy emerged there was no "enemy of the people" that, potentially, needed to be totally exterminated. In times of great social stress the demos of democracy can be replaced by the ethnos - that "the people" can come to hold an organic nationalist meaning as opposed to the pluralist, atomized-individual meaning it holds in the US other liberal democracies. How and why do modernizing peoples choose the organic nationalist path as opposed to the liberal path? Read Mann's book on fascists to find out. When do organic nationalists decide on genocide as opposed to mere repression? Read this book to find out.
A more serious flaw, however, is the possibility that Mann's work will stop here and not continue on to focus on how the nation can be identified in terms of religion (as with modern Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East) or with class (as it was with communism). Mann has a short chapter on Communist cleansing of "class enemies" in the Dark Side of Democracy, but the subject could really be an entire volume in an of itself. He also deals somewhat perfunctorily with religious fundamentalism in Fascists, but in a dismissive manner that I think does a disservice to the importance of the subject.
Comes Up Short.......2005-03-24
Ethnic cleansing has been practiced by signers of the Atlantic Charter in the past and continues to be practiced by emerging democracies of today. A book addressing this issue is a welcome addition to the literature of the evolving history of human rights. Thus it is with great anticipation that I turned to the "Dark Side of Democracy". Unfortunately, the book falls awfully short of its promise. Its title is misleading and it contains a large number of misstatements of facts and factual errors and omissions.
Neither the Armenian Genocide, atrocities of the Nazis and Communists nor Rawanda have anything to do with democracy as is implied by the book's title.
Misstatements and distortions are too numerous to list, but here is a brief sampling:
On p. 301 the reader is told that "In 1946 a Hungarian court in Cluj (now Kolosvar)..."
The problems with the assertion are the following:
(1) in 1946 the town you call Cluj was known to the overwhelming part of its population as Kolozsvar. In fact, the Romanian authorities renamed Kolozsvar (note the misspelling in the book) to Cluj-Napoca in 1974.
(2) There did not exist a "Hungarian court" in Kolozsvar in 1946.
On p. 305 in the section describing Romania the statement is made "Wild deportation began of the 200,000 Transylvanian Jews, more than 20,000 gypsies..." R. Braham, the internationally recognized expert in the field, in the introduction to "Tragedy of Romanian Jewry", Columbia University Press, 1994 writes "Jews of Old Romania and Southern Transylvania fared even better. Although they were subjected to great economic hardship, ...they survived the war almost intact."
Descriptions of many events are incomplete. On p. 299 the reader is told about 3,300 civilians murdered in Voivodina by the Hungarian Army, but no mention is made of the terrorist activities preceeding these events. No mention is made of the fact that the Hungarian Army court martialed the officers responsible, the only instance where officers on the Axis side were held responsible for the killing of civilians, including Jews.
The book fails to mention that alone of the allies of Nazi Germany, Hungary despite German occupation at the time, used its troops to protect Jews from deportation. Horthy ordered the Hungarian First Armored Division to Budapest preventing the deportation of Jews, about to be carried out from the Hungarian capital, in June 1944.
It is remarkable that no mention is made of the murder of the estimated 30-40,000 Hungarian civilians by Tito's henchmen after the conclusion of the Second World War. Several books, some in English, exist on the subject.
The book fails to mention the infamous, racist Benes Decrees that was the basis of depriving the autochthonous Hungarian population, living on land that was part of Hungary for a millenium but assigned to Czechoslovakia, of property, citizenship and deporting countless to slave labor. Ethnic Germans did not fare any better. The New York Times reported that the family of former secretary of state M. Albright profited from the seizure of German owned property.
It is even stranger that the book makes scant mention of the estimated 2 million Germans who died as a result of ethnic cleansing of Germans from the East.
The sentence on p. 355 "Germans flocked peacefully home" is offensive and mockery of the facts. For example, ethnic Germans of Romania, who were not murdered or deported to the Soviet Union, were allowed to leave only after the German government paid a ransom. These people left behind all their properties, owned by their families for centuries, with scant compensation.
It is rather disturbing that the book on ethnic cleansing does not reference or mention two standards on the subject: "Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth Century Europe", edited by S.B. Vardy and T.H Tooley, C.U. Press, 2003 and the A. M. de Zayas "Terrible Revenge", St. Martin's Press, 1994.
Sixty years after these terrible events the reader has a right to be told all that is known about these events and not an excerpt of some of the facts. That this is possible is shown by J. Faragher "A Great and Noble Scheme", Norton, 2005 retelling the expulsion of French Acadians from their homeland. The "Dark Side of Democracy" falls far short of these expectations.
Book Description
The genocidal barbarism of the Nazi forces has been well documented. What is little known is the fate of fifteen million German civilians who found themselves on the wrong side of new postwar borders. All over Eastern Europe, the inhabitants of communities that had been established for many centuries were either expelled or killed. Over two million Germans did not survive. Some of these people had supported Hitler, but the great majority did not. In A Terrible Revenge, de Zayas describes their horrible fate. This new edition includes an updated foreword, epilogue, and additional information from recent interviews with the children of the displaced.
Customer Reviews:
Time the World Put Communism on Trial........2007-08-12
I have this book, and glad I bought it. It's very enlightening.
I'll have to find out what that "Konzentrationslager Dokument F321 fuer den Internationalen Miltaergerichtshof Nuerenberg" is... seems very little info exists for it on the web.
and...
I am wondering when they will put the Nuremberg trials on a second hearing like Trotsky got... Dewey Investigating Committee found Moscow trials were a "perversion of judicial process," how much more so the Nuremberg Trials, and afterall, Soviet Justice demanded fake trials (the General who was appointed by the Russians, had been involved in fake trials in the 1930's in the USSR), since for Stalin, a false charge was just as good as a legitimate charge for more information After the Reich: The Brutal History of The Allied Occupation). ... as for Nuremberg, starting with creating laws, and backdating them, no cross-reference of witnesses, accepting hearsay as testimony, no right to appeal, heck, the officers weren't even allowed to know what charges were being brought against them. Despite an outcry from legal authorities everywhere that Nuremberg Law was hypocritical (e.g., the atomic bomb and the unforgivably inhumane bombing raids) the trial was simply victor's justice and revenge, not justice, but Stalin and his cohorts would have their way. Been reading some other books on the history of world war II and I'm not happy with.... the Seven Million Holocaust against Ukraine, that nobody ever utters a word about -- because the New York Times was too busy denying it (1932-1933), and the League of Nations was too busy sucking up to Stalin, and well.... you should read about the 85-110 Million murdered by Communists... and what about those gas chambers of the KGB? We never hear about them.
You know Joseph Goebbels wasn't denying the Holocaust? You know that? In his speech, "Communism with the Mask Off," he addresses the question that even possibly as many as 6 million may have died due to the famine forced on Ukraine, by Stalin's collectivism stupidity. Wretched. But nobody was listening to Goebbels' warnings about Communist aggression. I don't like it when I see these same Marxists in our governments now, running the media... and of course, that explains why nobody is discussing the 85-110 Million murdered by Communists; Stalin's extermination against nationalism, religious persecution (turning churches into barns, atheistical rampages of hatred and intoleration).. my God! my God! When will the Communists and Marxists be put on trial for their mega-murdering crimes against humanity? When will justice be served on the great criminals responsible for World War II?
This book serves as just one more piece of incriminating evidence against the true criminals responsible for World War II (and several others as well.
"There is no famine or actual starvation nor is there likely to be."
-New York Times, November 15, 1931, page 1
"Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda."
- New York Times, August 23, 1933
"Enemies and foreign critics can say what they please."
- New York Times, December 9, 1932
"You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."
- New York Times, May 14, 1933
"What are a few million dead Russians in a situation like this? Quite unimportant. This is just an incident in the sweeping historical changes here. I think the entire matter is exaggerated."
- New York Times reporter Walter Duranty (1932-1933).
The disregarded genocide.......2007-05-03
The most grievous violation of the right based on historical evolution and of any human right in general is to deprive populations of their right to occupy the country where they live by compelling them to settle elsewhere. ... the victorious powers decided at the end of WWII to impose this fate on hundreds of thousands of human beings ... in a most cruel manner.
-- Albert Schweitzer, ca. Nobel Prize for Peace, Oslo, 1954.
Ancestors of my best family friends lived in rural villages in land near the Danube River watershed. (Biggest crop: cannabis hemp.) They are known as the Danube Swabians and were among several peoples living outside of Germany's early 20th-century borders (often in enclaves resented by their neighbors) referred to as the ethic Germans (Volksdeutsche).
Following WWII, due to concessions made by England and America at Yalta[, approximately 17 million of these East European Germans were systematically expelled from their lands where many of them had lived for centuries.
2,111,000 were killed in the process!
A Terrible Revenge is the story of this forced dispossession.
Human rights activist and author, Dr. de Zayas, paints a sad and brutal picture of The Expulsion. Through touching personal stories of dozens of the victims and through a detailed account of the machinations of states, Dr. de Zayas has raised the issue of this uniquely "disregarded" 20th century genocide to center stage.
Why haven't we heard of this one? And why should we?
To answer the first question, let's go to a Webpage on 20th century genocides, where we obtain the following list:
Bosnia-Herzegovina: 1992-1995 - 200,000 Deaths
Rwanda: 1994 - 800,000 Deaths
Pol Pot in Cambodia: 1975-1979 - 2,000,000 Deaths
Nazi Holocaust: 1938-1945 - 6,000,000 Deaths
Rape of Nanking: 1937-1938 - 300,000 Deaths
Stalin's Forced Famine: 1932-1933 - 7,000,000 Deaths
Armenians in Turkey: 1915-1918 - 1,500,000 Deaths
Giving the benefit of the doubt to the accuracy of the numbers, we can see that 2,100,000 killings certainly qualifies The Expulsion as a genocide. It's actually the fourth highest in absolute death count. Also referring to the site's definition of genocide as massive "race" "killing" by intention, The Expulsion meets any objective criteria for inclusion on the standard list.
...
For my complete review of this book and for other book and movie
reviews, please visit my site [...]
Brian Wright
Copyright 2007
Amazing book on the persecution of innocents.......2007-03-08
Dr. Zayas has collected a comprehensive account of the persecution of innocents after WWII. A must read for those interested in the little known atrocities. Filled with touching antidotes told by people who were unlucky enough to have their home taken away and expelled under brutal circumstances simply as a political expediency.
A long overdue tale about the greatest crime of the 20th century in peacetime.......2007-02-17
This book is one of the few books I've read that actually caused me to feel physically ill. It details the horrible treatment innocent German civilians had to endure from the Bolshevik hordes in the period from 1944 and onwards. Even though written from a liberal and kind of "excuse me for being German" perspective, I appreciate the effort the author has made in writing and researching this thought-provoking book.
I'm fully aware that the German soldiers and their allies didn't exactly rub the Slavic population gently on the back as they passed, but due to partisans and Bolsheviks, I don't think they had much of a choice. But that being said, I think you'll be hard pressed to find instances where 20 German soldiers rape one Slavic girl again and again in front of her parents, before they slaughter the entire family and torch the property, for no other reason than the family being Slavic. As you might have guessed by now, this was more or less what happened to every German girl that found herself in the hands of these Eastern hordes.
After the initial ravage, plunder, murder and rape was through, in the ending phase of the war and just afterwards, followed the forced expulsion from their Germanic ancestral lands for nearly a millennium with nothing but what they could carry away in a few minutes, if that, in hand. The treatment these Germanic brethren of ours got by the Bolshevik conquerors, and the cowardice displayed by the Western "Allies", turning a blind eye to the horrible crimes committed against these helpless people from 1944 and onwards, is probably the most unknown and at the same time apocalyptic crime, carried out in peacetime in the heart of Europe.
Highly recommended as a compliment to the eternal repetitions we are forced to hear about daily in regards to the events nowadays elevated to what basically amounts to "our" modern mode of religion.
Wonderful and well written.......2006-10-26
This is a Great book. The author brings the issues home. I am the son of an expellee and still to this day my Father has nightmares about this time in his life. It gave me a better understanding of history and my past. If Mr Zayas writes more on this subject I will buy it also.
Customer Reviews:
Historical Account of Irish Slavery in 17th Century.......2007-05-11
The nonfiction book "To Hell or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland" by Sean O'Callaghan describes a moment in history that very few know about. In the seventeenth century, Oliver Cromwell (who took over England) encouraged the mass slaughter and enslavement of Irish men, women, and children for various reasons, one being that the Protestant English regarded the Catholic Irish as inhuman and unchristian.
According to O'Callaghan, many Irish priests were hunted down like wolves and Irish soldiers exiled to Spain or France, while rebels and widows alike were forcibly sent to Barbados in the Caribbean as indentured servants or slaves. Over 50,000 people were sent to Barbados to work on the sugar plantations. This book chronicles what happened to them. Beatings, whippings, torture, rape, and humiliation were just some of the terrible indecencies that these people suffered because they were Catholic and Irish.
The book itself is short, well written, and easy to read. The narrative moves from Cromwell's battles in Ireland* to the treatment of the surviving Irish to exportation to the Caribbean and indentured servitude/white slavery to modern-day descendants of the Irish on Barbados. In between, you will get a detailed and informative account of life in the seventeenth century while at war in the UK and as plantation owners and slaves in the Caribbean. There is even a chapter on Irish buccaneers (pirates).
*Please note you may want to look up who Oliver Cromwell was before you read this, as the book jumps straight into the action without too much political/biographical background.
I read this book quickly. It was fascinating, yet horrifying and thoroughly depressing. It is also eye-opening history. I highly recommended it to anyone interested in Caribbean, Irish, or English history, as well as for those interested in the slave trade or religious conflicts.
A history of the Irish as slaves.......2007-01-13
This is an excellent history of slavery imposed upon the Irish by the British government. This history of white slavery is frequently ignored.
The first chapters with detailed histories battles in Ireland are somewhat too complex. However, when the author gets to the story of slavery, the gathering of mostly women and children to serve as slaves in Barbados, the writing is excellent.
English power under Cromwell clearly did not consider the Irish as humans. The captives were treated almost like animals. The imposition of slavery shows well how an ideology of superiority can turn to cruelty, starvation, and oppression. While we tend to think of slavery in terms of racial groups, this work shows that racial groups are defined (socially constructed). To the English, the Irish were a racially inferior group.
Excellent book that covers what the history books omit.......2004-12-10
Being an Irish history buff, one day I had come along an interesting bit of Irish history, about a time period during the slave trade years, where there was a great deal of Irish slaves. Yet, I could only find this information on websites with bibliographies of books that are rare or no longer existant. Yet, I had the fortunate luck of stumbling across this book here on Amazon.com. I must say, it was everything and more than I asked for. Detailed accounts of the invasion of Ireland by Cromwell and his forces, the brutal savagery and overall genocide committed by these men. The detailed accounts of how the slaves were sold on the auction block, how they were looked down upon by even the other slaves, since they were white.
I highly reccommend this book to any Irish history buffs like myself or any students doing a report on Irish history.
It is sad that the average American history book sums up Cromwell's attrocities as "Cromwell treated the Irish very poorly". This book brings to light the extent of the savagery done upon the Irish, and does great justice in explaining the time known as the Irish Holocaust.
Customer Reviews:
Informative and intelligent.......2006-05-20
Yes, I did read this book and enjoyed it purely from a historical standpoint. No, I did not bring any preconceived notions of which side is right in the genocide argument. I don't really care. In reading the comments by others (do read them for a laugh), one reviewer was correct when he/she pointed out that most who write reviews on this subject matter likely haven't read it to begin with. I agree that the world is quite a different place from 90 years ago. The question that people should ask one another is: Are we going to learn from this or repeat the same mistakes? Read this book, and I would suggest "The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide". Both are well-written and free of the diarrheal propaganda that flows on the subject and prevents intelligent analysis/discussion. Again, view some of the other reviews and you'll get the idea. The Armenian Diaspora attempts to label anything that goes against their viewpoints as "denialist", and to prevent any analysis that might destabilize their position. I have gotten rather sick of trying to find unbiased books on this topic, but I would agree with another reviewer in suggesting that they move on and get a life. As a final point, the Ottoman Empire (or even Ottoman Turkey) is NOT present-day Turkey, and has not been so since 1923 when the country was founded. I think that it is always good to look at a current map and know what was what and what is what now when reading history. Happy reading.
The most prominent Armenian Genocide denier in the world.......2006-05-07
Mr. Justin McCarthy is probably the most prominent denier of the Armenian Genocide. It is no secret that he officially works as an adviser to the turkish government and therefor entirely reflects the turkish denialist position in his works on the Armenian Genocide.
Due to the fact that the denialist position of the turkish government today is nearly entirely based on McCarthy's works, he has become the most important figure in Turkey's denial campaign. He can therefor be considered the 'David Irving' of Turkish revisionism.
This book is definitely a perfect example of historical revisionism and Genocide denial. It can only be recommended to readers who are interested in Turkey's denial-campagin and want to take a closer look at the denier's argumentation.
For everyone who wants to get acquainted with the facts of the Armenian Genocide, there are plenty of reliable books on this issue written by various prominent european and american historians.
Great study.......2005-08-27
This book is a great study. I was having difficulties to find information about masacres comitted on Muslim communities of Ottoman Empire.
I noticed that in many countries, Armenian propaganda and lobbying associations made this kind of study impossible, by threatening editors.
Thanks God, freedom of seech is still garanteed in USA.
In France, Turks are totaly censored... :(
Much needed historical work.......2005-07-20
This book fills the gaps in the important area of recent world history and does long overdue justice to the millions of victims of the brutal conflicts that happened in 19-20th centuries. The book is well documented, all facts are based on valid archives and respectable sources. The author conducted extremely fair and detailed research and objectively covered the events.
Not scholarly, but excellent example of paid propaganda.......2005-05-07
(...)
Serious scholars did not "ingore" this book. Yes it is a footnote used only to illustrate the polution of academia with paid propaganda, but it is a footnote nonetheless!
Justin McCarthy's name now joins Fred Leuchter, David Irving, Robert Faurisson, Arthur Butz, Bradley Smith, Ditlieb Felderer and others in the denial industry.
So even with inane pretence at scholarship McCarthy has managed note: He joins various deniers of mass murder, ethnic cleansing, etc on a very unfortunate list.
A reader would be much better of consulting the immense bibliography at the US Holocaust museum which lays bare the lies McCaarthy and his ilk spout.
Book Description
The first comprehensive history of ethnic cleansing in Europe and Western Asia from the early nineteenth century to the present. It explains how repeated waves of murderous assaults transformed imperial borderlands into nation-states, and offers a new interpretation of violence by ordinary people.
Customer Reviews:
Equally interesting and disturbing.......2007-08-16
This book chronicles the development of ethnic cleansing in Europe during the late 19th century and well into the 20th century. Even before the Treaty of Lausanne, which formally established ethnic cleansing as a national policy (as well as a foreign policy), numerous European nations were practicing it. One thing that is particularly bizarre is that many of the victims of ethnic cleansing were very loosely categorized as being members of a certain "foreign" ethnic group, even if they didn't particularly see themselves as such (i.e., the Pontic Greeks). Perhaps Professor Lieberman should have chronicled how these groups fared upon being "returned" to their "national homeland" (which many of them had never previously seen, let alone considered moving to). The book is well-written and balanced. Professor Lieberman includes horrifying eyewitness testimony of ethnic cleansing, making the book more persuasive. I would have liked Professor Lieberman to have also included the Indian partition and the expulsion of Jews from much of the Middle East during the 1940s and after (this is just a personal preference, and in no way takes away from this book).
an important contribution to a complex issue.......2007-07-08
Lieberman has done a good job of focusing this book on "ethnic cleansing" in modern Europe, as the title promises, based on historic fact and not wild speculation or political agendas as is found in many other books that deal with the issues. This is not an attempt to psychoanalyze entire populations, but it does give the reader some history and insight into ethnic rivalries and hostilities without excessive navel gazing on human nature.
Not overly emotional about an emotional subject, but not so clinical as to be devoid of the kinds of human details that make for a compelling story. This book actually covers "modern Europe" going back to the early 1800's as nation states evolved from Empires which had been in existence for many centuries before such as the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, Russian, and others. While the true numbers will never be known, it is easy to count up over 100,000,000 people who were killed, injured or dislocated in this short sliver of human experience in the name of nation-building or some other such movement.
Especially good is Lieberman's treatment of the massive shifts in population which occurred after WW II, the redrawing of boundaries which resulted in even greater population shifts than occurred after WWI, and how "ethnic cleansing" is not really a modern-day phenomenon in the context of human interaction. While Lieberman does not get into the even more massive shifts in population which occurred when the British left India and Pakistan during the same time period, he does acknowledge that he has carved out only a part of the story, and is to be congratulated for making this slice of history very readable and educational for those who do not have much experience in this field. For those of you interested in this kind of history, this book is a far better read (and much cheaper) than most others such as Levene or Bloxham which covers an even smaller piece of this period and far better than Mann's ridiculous theories of how this all came about.
An important contribution.......2007-06-24
The history of the modern world is partially one of ethnic-cleansing given the modern world's and especially Europe's interest in the nation-state. The advent of Wilsonian self determination and the nationalism of the 19th century led to the creation of homogenous nation states and the end of minorities. Many of these minorities were pushed back to their 'motherlands' and when there was no home country for them, such as the Jews, they were simply exterminated. This is an important contribution for it goes beyond the usual examination and looks into the topics of the Pontic Greeks, the Circassians, the Kurds, and other cases such as Cyprus and Iraq. Most importanlty it examines Eastern Europe between 1900 and 1945 and the fate of the Poles and Germans after the Second World War.
There are several missing topics, the genocide and ethnic-cleansing of the Nestorian, Assyrian and Jacobite Christians in Turkey, Syria and Iraq is mostly ignored and this is unfortunate because these groups have never had any history examine them. But a book cannot be all things. Many of the stories are covered failry and there is only minor bias. The topic of the cleansing of the Jews of the Arab countries is included and that is an important topic, but as the book goes so far afield it is actually a history of ethnic-cleansing in Europe and the East.
Seth J. Frantzman
Fascinating History Everyone Should Know.......2007-01-16
This book provides an excellent history of ethnic conflict in modern Europe in a very readable, compelling form. It presents esential material for anyone wanting to gain an understanding of how Europe came to be the way it is today, and provides a context for ongoing ethnic conflicts from Cyprus to the Balkans to Chechnya. The writing is superb and Dr. Lieberman weaves a fascinating narrative. I read it while on vacation and at the end of each chapter found myself eager to move on the next. I recommend it highly.
Gripping, Revelatory Account on European Ethnic Cleansing.......2006-11-09
Historian Benjamin Lieberman's "Terrible Fate: Ethnic Cleansing in the Making of Modern Europe", is the first, exhaustive account I have read on this hitherto relatively unknown aspect of modern European history; one which has regrettably played such a prominent role in reshaping the map of modern Europe. Lieberman demonstrates convincingly that both the Ottoman Turkish Armenian genocide of World War I and the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews in World War II can be seen as the most horrific manifestations of a long-term history of ethnic cleansing in Europe which started nearly 200 years ago and has continued to the present. Lieberman's riveting account begins with the Greek War of Independence (1821 - 1830), in which he notes - much to my own amazement - that there were substantial Turkish populations residing in Morea - better known both historically and today as the Peloponessus (Regrettably this is misspelled in Lieberman's book.) - who were driven out via massacres and the burning and looting of Morean towns and villages and were forced to flee to the Anatolian portion of the Turkish empire. Then he describes the bloody history of the Balkans in the latter half of the 19th Century and the first two decades of the 20th Century; the relatively recent ethnic cleansing in the Balkans since the early 1990s may be best understood by examining anew the Balkans' first wave of ethnic cleansing.
Lieberman reminds us that substantial episodes of ethnic cleansing accompanied the rapid decline and fall of the Habsburg Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and especially, Ottoman Turkish empires immediately after World War I. Probably the best known example is the mass expulsion of Anatolian Greeks - which I might add is vividly recounted in an early chapter of fellow Brunonian Jeffrey Eugenides' bestselling novel "Middlesex" - by Turkish nationalist armies commanded by Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, but there were other, almost equally dramatic, episodes between the two world wars which involved mass deportations of German- and Polish-speaking peoples among others. The Holocaust is covered succinctly in the chapter entitled "There Was No One Left for Me", in which Lieberman reminds us of substantial support for the Nazi genocide against the Jews by Poles, Ukranians and others living in Nazi German-occupied terrorities. World War II's end was marked by yet another series of ethnic cleansings, which would remove finally Poland's resident German population, virtually all of the Soviet Union's German population, and the Ukraine's Polish population. He also treats the mass exodus of Arabs and Jews in the Middle East marking the birth of the nation state of Israel as yet another Ottoman legacy of ethnic cleansing, along with ethnic strife between Cypriot Greeks and Turks, before turning his attention once more to the Balkans in the 1990s. Without question, Lieberman's book is an important - indeed definitive - look at ethnic cleansing in shaping modern European history and is required reading for anyone interested in understanding the history of Central and Eastern Europe.
Book Description
As early as 1654, English and French explorers in the southern Appalachians reported seeing dark-skinned, brown- and blue-eyed, and European-featured people speaking broken Elizabethan English, living in cabins, tilling the land, smelting silver, practicing Christianity, and most perplexing of all, claiming to be "Portyghee." Declared "free persons of color" in the late 1700s by the English and Scotch-Irish immigrants, the Melungeons, as they were known, were driven off their lands and denied voting rights, education, and the right to judicial process. The law was enforced mercilessly and sometimes violently in the resoundingly successful effort to totally disenfranchise these earliest American settlers.
These Melungeons were a remarkable people caught up in a nightmare not of their own making. Perhaps history can finally amend itself and belatedly recognize the incredible achievement of these brave and lonely people, who were among the earliest American pioneers, and bring at long last an end to the Inquisition. The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People by N. Brent Kennedy and Robyn Vaughan Kennedy is their story.
Customer Reviews:
The Melungeons/Kennedy.......2007-09-07
Loved the Book! Very informative and entertaining. A good resource book for genealogists doing research on Melungeons.
A very important work.......2007-08-30
Saying N. Brent Kennedy is a very important person is something of an understatement. Through his work and collaboration with many others he has come forward to put a face on the contemporary inquiry into mixed race and multiethnic cultures in the United States. Designed for the lay person, "The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People," is a brave book written by Melungeon authors the Kennedy's, that sparks thoughts, heated debate, as you can see from these reviews, and most importantly, action. As a combination of Brent Kennedy's many years of online projects and this book *many* people have looked into their ethnic backgrounds using some of the newly available DNA testing. Apart from my general appreciation for what Kennedy as an individual(working in collobation with others) has done for the conversation around ethnicity I really enjoyed the tone, voice, pace and even the historical photographs in "The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People." Kennedy is a gifted stortyteller and you will feel privy to his thoughts, research, investigations and theory upon reading his book. I highly recommend this title to anyone studying the complexities of race and ethnicity in the southeastern United States and those particularly interested in southeastern US cultural history. Apart from those folk, "The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People," has much to offer the general readership, particularly those interested in geneology. A must read--three or four thumbs up!
Not academic in any way.......2007-08-25
I think there are a lot of people that would like to believe in what in this book. On the surface it is an easy read since written in a good conversational language but the content does not sound credible. It does not provide good resources and does not make a good case.
Rubbish.......2007-05-13
This is one of the worst books on Melungeons ever written. There is no credible research at all.
Fascinating!.......2003-04-01
I grew up with Melungeon classmates in southeastern OH and picked this up out of curiosity. What a fascinating story! The subtitle is perhaps a little misleading. I almost avoided the book because it sounded like a diatribe about ethnic massacres; whereas it is really a geneaological journey that weaves in the Melungeon experience in America. At first it comes off as an esoteric delving into the author's geneaology; but as the story unfolds, the reader becomes sucked into the fascinating story of Kennedy's family and their colorful Melungeon roots.
A downside is that he is quick to take scientists to task for their hesitancy about alternative views on Melungeon origins. He seems not to be aware that researchers, in ANY scientific field, need to exercise caution and cannot advocate new hypotheses without data. Meanwhile, he exercises no such caution about his ideas -- speculation on everything from lost colonies, to some really far-fetched word origins -- runs rampant. If not for this I'd give it 5 stars. That being said, this is a fun and fascinating book, and the author's enthusiasm really comes through; a great introduction to a fascinating people.
Customer Reviews:
The Politically Correct View.......2006-07-26
Gary Anderson's book is nothing more than a new "politically correct" view of Texas History. Totally biased against the "white settler". For example his treatment of the great document, "Indian Depredations in Texas" by Joseph Wilbarger is without any merit and the attacks on this book are all hearsay. Read the original Indian depredation claims and go to the areas and talk to the families of survivors and see the documentation they have and you will realize this book is garbage.
History of Early Texas.......2006-06-07
Professor Anderson has written a highly detailed account of early Texas history. His research and relating of detail is superb! I have found details in his book never seen before anywhere. He does have a strong bias in his writing that leans toward the native American's point of view (which is fine), and against various "white" men and groups (Texas rangers mainly). Overlooking this minor complaint, his book is excellant, and I am glad to have it as a reference. Not a "light read" at all, very detailed, almost like reading a thesis. Congratulations to Prof. Anderson for a well documented, well researched book. (the only claim I found objectionable thus far on page 127 where he claims Plains Indian societies never shot down women and children among their own....not true...see the Harrell archaeological site in Texas)
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