This is a book about genocide, but it is not ultimately a “genocide book.” Certainly, Power works her way through the stories of the major, undisputed genocides of the 20th Century (skipping over the Holocaust, other than through its legal ramifications through the Nuremburg trials) – Armenia, Cambodia, Iraq’s Anfal campaign, Bosnia (with special emphasis on Srebrenica), Rwanda and Kosovo. Along the way, she intersperses the tale of the creation of “genocide” as a concept, as something different and more sinister than “crimes against humanity,” and the ensuing enshrinement of that idea in international normative law.

But these tales have been told quite thoroughly in other (even if not always widely read) places. Still, one looking for a good overview of many of these tragedies (“I know something bad happened in Bosnia, but I’m embarrassed to admit that I don’t really know what”) could do worse than to start here. She breaks down each event with a short summary of the political and human history, and then further examines the warnings given to Western leaders, their recognition that genocide was truly occuring (or lack thereof), their response (or lack thereof) and the aftermath and fallout from those policy decisions (or lack thereof).

As mentioned, however, the book, finally, is not a “genocide book,” simply put. It is a book about the repeated failure of the American system to prevent genocide at the very moment of its powerful, global-in-reach American Century. And the shocking – but thoroughly argued – point that lies at its center is that it is not that the American system failed, but that it worked. That is to say, that within the inner circles of American power, there has never been the political will to take the necessary steps to prevent, suppress or punish genocide, and so all the feinting and prevarications that have enabled American leaders to avoid simply doing something have necessarily worked backwards from that internalized starting point. Repeatedly, overwhelmingly and successfully.

Power repeatedly points out that information – simply knowing the facts about past genocides – will never be enough to stop future ones. But it is undoubtedly a necessary starting point for progress in this regard. Out of curiosity, I stopped by my local Barnes and Noble and my local Borders to see if I could find some further, more detailed reading on some of these stories. At both, there were a few books on the former Yugoslavia, even some ones that look quite informative about its breakup and descent into xenophobia, nationalism and slaughter. And post-genocide Rwanda has attracted quite a cottage industry of Western “experts” that will be happy to repeat the same stirring stories of courage and survival for you. But I couldn’t find a single book about the expulsion of Armenians from Turkey, Pol Pot’s reign in Cambodia, or Saddam Hussein’s attempts to eradicate the Kurdish population of northern Iraq. The last seems particularly surprising, given the current interest in the country.

Near the end of this book, Power writes that “officials at all levels of government calculated that the political costs of getting involved in stopping genocide far exceeded the costs of remaining uninvolved,” a calculation partly based on a lack of outcry from their constituents. Sending American troops to die in a confusing, far-away conflict will make headlines. If Americans don’t raise a noise about the unacceptable human tragedy of present genocides, politicians will never risk making those headlines. But if you can’t even find some basic information on genocides that have occurred in the past, what is the chance you will know enough, soon enough, to raise a racket as they occur in the present?