"A Problem From Hell"

From former UN Ambassador and author of the New York Times bestseller The Education of an Idealist Samantha Power, the Pulitzer Prize-winning book on America's repeated failure to stop genocides around the world

In her prizewinning examination of the last century of American history, Samantha Power asks the haunting question: Why do American leaders who vow "never again" repeatedly fail to stop genocide?

Power, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and the former US Ambassador to the United Nations, draws upon exclusive interviews with Washington's top policymakers, thousands of declassified documents, and her own reporting from modern killing fields to provide the answer. "A Problem from Hell" shows how decent Americans inside and outside government refused to get involved despite chilling warnings, and tells the stories of the courageous Americans who risked their careers and lives in an effort to get the United States to act.

A modern classic and "an angry, brilliant, fiercely useful, absolutely essential book" (New Republic), "A Problem from Hell" has forever reshaped debates about American foreign policy.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award
Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize
Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
Winner of the Raphael Lemkin Award

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Published Dec 24, 2013

656 pages

Average rating: 7.5

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amenmacoak

Oct 20, 2022

8/10 stars

This book took me years to get through, both due to its length and the weight of its subject. It is not an easy or light read but it was an enlightening one. It will anger you but will also equip you to see this problem with new eyes. I learned so much from reading it, underlined seemingly every other paragraph, and shook a fist at the heavens many many times. It will give you an unflinching portrait of the role (and often times the lack of a role) the United States has played in preventing and stopping genocides.

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