Includes bibliographical references and index.

pt. 1. Overview -- 1. The origins of genocide -- Genocide in prehistory, antiquity, and early modernity -- The Vendée uprising -- Zulu genocide -- Naming genocide: Raphael Lemkin -- Defining genocide: the UN Convention -- Bounding genocide: comparative genocide studies -- What is destroyed in genocide? -- Multiple and overlapping identities -- Dynamism and contingency -- The question of genocidal intent -- Contested cases of genocide -- Atlantic slavery: and after -- Area bombing and nuclear warfare -- UN sanctions against Iraq -- 9/11: terrorism as genocide? -- Structural and institutional violence -- Is genocide ever justified? -- 2. State and empire, war and revolution -- The state, imperialism, and genocide -- Imperial famines -- The Congo "rubber terror" -- The Japanese in East and Southeast Asia -- The US in Indochina -- The Soviets in Afghanistan -- Imperial ascent and dissolution -- Genocide and war -- The First World War and the dawn of industrial death -- The Second World War and the "barbarization of warfare" -- Genocide and social revolution -- The nuclear revolution and "omnicide" --

pt. 2. Cases -- 3. Genocides of indigenous peoples -- Colonialism and the discourse of extinction -- The conquest of the Americas -- Spanish America -- The United States and Canada -- Other genocidal strategies -- Australia's Aborigines and the Namibian Hereros -- Genocide in Australia -- The Herero genocide -- Denying genocide, celebrating genocide -- Complexities and caveats -- Indigenous revival -- The genocide of Guatemala's Mayans -- 4. The Ottoman destruction of Christian minorities -- Origins of the genocide -- War, deportation, and massacre -- The Armenian genocide -- The Assyrian genocide -- The Pontian Greek genocide -- Aftermath: attempts at justice -- The denial -- Chechnya -- 5. Stalin and Mao -- The Soviet Union and Stalinism -- 1917: the Bolsheviks seize power -- Collectivization and famine -- The Gulag -- The Great Purge of 1937-38 -- The war years -- The destruction of national minorities -- China and Maoism -- Stalin, Mao, and genocide -- 6. The Jewish holocaust -- Origins -- "Ordinary Germans" and the Nazis -- The turn to mass murder -- Debating the Holocaust -- Intentionalists vs. functionalists -- Jewish resistance -- The Allies and the churches: could the Jews have been saved? -- Willing executioners? -- Israel, the Palestinians, and the Holocaust -- Is the Jewish Holocaust "uniquely unique"? -- The Nazis' other victims -- 7. Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge -- Origins of the Khmer Rouge -- War and revolution, 1970-75 -- A genocidal ideology -- A policy of "urbicide," 1975 -- "Base people" vs. "New people" -- Cambodia's Holocaust, 1975-79 -- Genocide against Buddhists and ethnic minorities -- Aftermath: politics and the quest for justice -- East Timor -- 8. Bosnia and Kosovo -- Origins and onset -- Gendercide and genocide in Bosnia -- The international dimension -- Kosovo, 1998-99 -- Aftermaths -- Genocide in Bangladesh, 1971 -- 9. Apocalypse in Rwanda -- Introduction: horror and shame -- Background to genocide -- Genocidal frenzy -- Aftermaths -- Congo and Darfur --

pt. 3. Social Science perspectives -- 10. Psychological perspectives -- Narcissism, greed, fear, humiliation -- The psychology of perpetrators -- The Stanford prison experiments -- The psychology of rescuers -- 11. The sociology and anthropology of genocide -- Sociological perspectives -- The sociology of modernity -- Ethnicity and ethnic conflict -- Ethnic conflict and violence "specialists" -- "Middleman minorities" -- Anthropological perspectives -- 12. Political science and international relations -- Empirical investigations -- The changing face of war -- Democracy, war, and genocide/democide -- Norms and prohibition regimes -- 13. Gendering genocide -- Gendercide vs. root-and-branch genocide -- Women as targets -- Gendercidal institutions -- Genocide and violence against homosexuals -- Genocidal men, genocidal women -- A note on gendered propaganda --

pt. 4. The future of genocide -- 14. Memory, forgetting, and denial -- Contested memories: four cases -- I. Germany -- II. Japan -- III. Russia -- IV. Argentina -- The politics of forgetting -- Genocide denial: motives and strategies -- Denial and free speech -- 15. Justice, truth, and redress -- Leipzig, Constantinople, Nuremberg, Tokyo -- The international criminal tribunals: Yugoslavia and Rwanda -- Jurisdictional issues -- The concept of a victim group -- Gender and genocide -- National trials -- The "mixed tribunals": Cambodia and Sierra Leone -- Another kind of justice: Rwanda's gacaca experiment -- The Pinochet case -- The International Criminal Court (ICC) -- International citizens' tribunals -- Truth and reconciliation -- The challenge of redress -- 16. Strategies of intervention and prevention -- Warning signs -- Humanitarian intervention -- Sanctions -- The United Nations -- When is military intervention justified? -- A standing "peace army"? -- Ideologies and individuals -- The role of the hones witness -- Ideologies, religious and secular -- Personal responsibility.