In 1994 Rwandan government forces slaughtered between 800,000 to one million people, mostly Tutsis, and many thousands of moderate Hutus. Cambodia's Khmer Rouge killed approximately 1.7 million people - more than twenty percent of its own population - in just four years. Time and again, throughout the 20th Century, various groups of people-such as the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe, the Kurds in Northern Iraq, the Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda, and the Muslims in the former Yugoslavia-have been targeted for elimination for various reasons (extremist ideology, ethnic animosity, and a diabolical regard for human life).

Despite the scale of these killings, there are those who try to minimize the impact of genocide. Through scholarly analyses and historical data, and eyewitness accounts, the contributors to this volume delineate the antecedents to and the causes and results of genocide in the twentieth century. In doing so, they provide compelling evidence that rebuts the convoluted and fallacious notions often created by cynics, deniers and "interpreters" who try to shape historical events to fit their own purposes.

The second edition will contain new chapters on the genocide in the former Yugoslavia and the mass killing of the Kurds in Iraq, and the intervention and prevention of genocide, as well as updated information on the majority of the genocides examined in this book. Also includes 14 maps.