What is genocide? Why does it happen? What can be done to prevent it from happening again?

At the end of the Second World War, with the establishment of the United Nations, the holding of the Nuremberg Trials and the adoption of the Genocide Convention, the international community assured itself that genocide would never happen again. But never again has become a meaningless phrase.

This book asks why. It also asks, what is genocide? Where has it happened in the past? Who is being threatened by genocide today? And what can we do to prevent this terrible crime from recurring?

Providing an overview of the history of genocide worldwide, this revised, expanded edition helps readers answer these questions. It brings them up to date with recent events--the killing of the Rohingya in Myanmar, the persecution of the Uyghurs in China, the broader recognition of the genocide of Indigenous Peoples, the resurgence of fighting in Darfur, and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. It examines and elucidates the debates and controversies surrounding the use of the term genocide as well as the reasons for the common response by individuals, governments and the United Nations -- denial.

Key Text Features

annotated resources

chapters

definitions

explanation

facts

further information

further reading

headings

historical context

illustrations

index

map

sidebars

table of contents

timeline

In Moth, Jane Springer uses shaped poems, prose poems, and poems with unusual structures to soar through time and the natural world. Yet, while her lines are aesthetically playful, she examines serious subjects, including our destruction of the environment, the widening and divisive gulf between socioeconomic classes, and the further injustices thrust upon those already suffering in society. She focuses on the role of women in a chaotic world, as mothers, daughters, and sisters work to restore order and comfort. Simultaneously heartbreaking and lighthearted, these masterful poems gracefully delve into the complexities of our lives.

On one hand Murder Ballad is a fierce critique of Jane Springer's Southern inheritance, on the other these poems quickly reveal the enigmatic beauty and sharply ironic humor contained in the still-relevant colloquialisms that often shape her characters. Her loose definitions of Southern-isms are the jumping-off place for the masterful poet as she leaps, narrates, and redefines the American South.

From Pretty As You Please

Then when you're nightfishing the Mississippi & catching a bucket of nothing,
lonely as a single barge weeping its rust in the water--you see them--on a
bridge above you, hair slick as frogskin& glittering from skinny dipping--
as in bucknaked & necking--& suddenly the moon is an empty jar of mayo.

Jane Springer's first book Dear Blackbird (University of Utah Press, 2007) won the Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize. Her other awards include an AWP Intro Prize, the Robert Penn Warren Prize for Poetry, an NEA fellowship, and a Whiting Writers Award. She teaches poetry at Hamilton College in upstate New York, where she lives with her husband, son, and two dogs. Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from such places as Fugue, Oxford American, and The Southern Review.