Teaching and Learning about Countries in Conflict

After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness?: My Encounters with Kurdistan
By Jonathan C. Randal, Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1999. Throughout the history of the Kurds, world powers have promised to help them achieve autonomy, and each time the Kurds have been betrayed. But they are also masters of betrayal. In this book we are taken behind the scenes of the Middle East conflict, following interviews with Kurdish leaders, diplomats, warriors, and journalists.

Balkan Ghosts: a Journey through History
By Robert D. Kaplan, Vintage Books, New York, 1996. Tracing the troubled history of the Balkans from the assassination that triggered World War I to the ethnic warfare sweeping the present Yugoslavia, the Balkans have been the crucible of the twentieth century, the place where terrorism and genocide first became tools of policy. This political travelogue deciphers the ancient passions of the Balkans and the intractable hatreds for outsiders.

The Coming Conflict with China
By Richard Bernstein and Ross H. Monro, Vintage Books, New York, 1998. Two former Beijing bureau chiefs look at the potentially disastrous collision course now taking shape in U.S./China relations. The authors argue that this tense global rivalry between east and west is shaping the course of the twenty-first century.

Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine
By Jasper Becker, Henry Holt and Co., New York, 1996. Journalist Jasper Becker writes the first full account of the four-year famine during the Great Leap Forward, an attempt at utopian engineering gone tragically wrong. In hundreds of interviews Becker tries to understand what really happened between 1958-1962 in rural China, and why it has been kept secret for so long.

Iraq under Seige: the Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War
Edited by Anthony Arnove, South End Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000. Leading voices against the sanctions, including Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, document the human, environmental, and social toll of the U.S.-led war against Iraq, ending with concrete ideas on how people can help end the sanctions.

No Pretty Pictures: a Child of War
By Anita Lobel, Avon Books, New York, 1998. This finalist for the National Book Award for younger readers tells the story of survivors of the Jewish Holocaust. The theme of the book is bearing witness, told from the perspective of a child.

State of the Peoples: a Global Human Rights Report on Societies in Danger
From Cultural Survival, Beacon Press, Boston, 1993. Arranged by geographic region, this guide contains information on hundreds of indigenous peoples, articles on critical issues facing specific groups, more than 90 photographs, charts, and maps, plus a Resources for Action section for activists, academics, and the press.

We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families:
Stories from Rwanda
By Philip Gourevitch, Picador, New York, 1998. In April of 1994 the government of Rwanda called on the Hutu majority to kill everyone in the Tutsi minoiry. Over the next 3 months 800,000 Tutsis were murdered in the worse act of genocide since Nazi Germany. This wok is a history of the genocideÕs background, an anatomy of the killings, and an account of what it means to survive in its aftermath.

Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Sarajevo
By Zlata Filipovic, Viking, New York, 1994. The diary of a girl during the tumultuous years of 1991-93 when her life changed from her carefree days as an eleven-year-old in Sarajevo, to hiding in her parents cellar as bombs rained down on her home city. At times innocent and at others wise, ZlataÕs Diary awakened the world to the horrors of war seen through a childÕs eyes.