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i was helping a friend move out and spotted this book a few months ago. immediately i asked if i could borrow it and she said yes & i was so happy. i even caught myself surprised with this because i hadn’t done like heavy reading in a fat while but i was somehow drawn to this. after i discovered this book, i remembered how much i actually love reading and learning.
i think everyone should read this book, especially given what the world has come to today. it provides fresh insight through a lens critical of mass genocide and looks back on history, the people & their mindsets behind them, and the aftermath. really makes you think about how easily things could be avoided.
its pretty small, easy to carry and just easy to read too so i tend to take it anywhere i go and read whenever i can because its gotten me that intrigued and curious
Genocide (1985) – Edited by A. A. Galkin, published by Progress Publishers.
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one of the books of my *too long* currently-reading list.
A book about the Rwanda genocide, a difficult but great read to understand how the seeds of hatred can be planted and dispersed among society.
Also a good critic to colonialism and neocolonialism (which are, for me at leas, the two greatest scourges of our existence after the invention of ketchup)
Sep 26, 2024
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"Adolf Hitler. Joseph Stalin. Benito Mussolini. Mao Zedong. Kim Il Sung. Vladimir Lenin. These cruel dictators wrote their names on the pages of history in the blood of countless innocent victims. Yet they themselves were once young people searching for their place in the world, dealing with challenges many of us face—parental authority, education, romance, loss—and doing so in ways that might be uncomfortably familiar.
Historian Brandon K. Gauthier has created a fascinating work—epic yet intimate, well-researched but immensely readable, clear-eyed and empathetic—looking at the lives of these six dictators, with a focus on their youths. We watch Lenin’s older brother executed at the hands of the Tsar’s police—an event that helped radicalize this overachieving high-schooler. We observe Stalin grappling with the death of his young, beautiful wife. We see Hitler’s mother mourning the loss of three young children—and determined that her first son to survive infancy would find his place in the world.
The purpose isn’t to excuse or simply explain these horrible men, but rather to treat them with the empathy they themselves too often lacked. We may prefer to hold such lives at arm’s length so as to demonize them at will, but this book reminds us that these monstrous rulers were also human beings—and perhaps more relatable than we’d like."
Mar 4, 2024
😃
It's a real life account of an anthropologist who worked with forensic teams to investigate the mass graves from genocides in Latin America and it's pretty fucking interesting yet heartbreaking
Mar 16, 2025
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i got reminded of how much stuff i like and dont like and how i have a life & personality of my own thats worthy enough to be seen and serve some purpose (whatever that may be)… in other words i should’ve kept a diary to write everyday to look back on but im happy i found my way to this app instead
here is a beautiful moment from last nights event at barefoot. i was slightly tipsy, slightly high, & very happy to look up at the sky. it gets pretty hot in there but i think id like to go there more often. their wedges & fries are so good too. i didn’t want to spend on the beef burger although it was tempting because their prices are slightly high
Mar 29, 2025
Mar 31, 2025