For thirty years, Ben Kiernan has been deeply involved in the study of genocide and crimes against humanity. He has played a key role in unearthing confidential documentation of the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge. His writings have transformed our understanding not only of twentieth-century Cambodia but also of the historical phenomenon of genocide. This new book, the first global history of genocide and extermination from ancient times, is among his most important achievements.Kiernan examines outbreaks of mass violence from the classical era to the present, focusing on worldwide colonial exterminations and twentieth-century case studies including the Armenian genocide, the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin's mass murders, and the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides. He identifies connections, patterns, and features that in nearly every case gave early warning of the catastrophe to come: racism or religious prejudice, territorial expansionism, and cults of antiquity and agrarianism. The ideologies that have motivated perpetrators of mass killings in the past persist in our new century, says Kiernan. He urges that we heed the rich historical evidence with its telltale signs for predicting and preventing future genocides.

班．基爾南 Ben Kiernan

Kiernan為惠特尼．格理斯沃歷史講座教授（A. Whitney Griswold Professor of History）、國際暨區域研究教授，並為耶魯大學種族滅絕研究計畫（Genocide Studies Program at Yale University）（http://www.yale.edu/gsp）創辦主任。他先前的專書包括《波布政權》（The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975–1979）和《波布如何掌權》（How Pol Pot Came to Power: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Communism in Cambodia, 1930–1975），以上皆由耶魯大學出版社發行。

譯者簡介

陳義仁

臺大財金系畢業，目前就讀臺師大翻譯所博士班。