Book Review: Modern Genocide: The Definitive Resource and Document Collection

As a term, “genocide” is one of the more recent entrants in the English language lexicon, having gained currency only since World War II and that conflict’s attendant pogroms of the Jewish and other peoples. As a concept and course of action, however, that of a methodical effort to eliminate an entire race or ethnic group, history shows that there have been numerous holocausts stretching back, probably, to the origin of our species. In fact, there have been so many concerted efforts on the part of People A to rid Planet Earth of People B, that the editors have limited the scope of their work to those instances that occurred during the twentieth century, hence the import of “modern” in its title.