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The World's Bloodiest History: Massacre, Genocide, and the Scars They Left on Civilization
This book recounts some of the most horrifying episodes of the past, from ancient times to our own, in searing detail, while rigorously investigating their causes - from religious fanaticism and ethnic rivalry to political power struggles and hunger for vengeance -- and their consequences.
Engrossing in their descriptions of diverse historical periods and cultures, intriguing in their insights into human impulses and motivations, perplexing in their implications, these are stories that lead us to reflect on our own character and strength of will, and to question, at the most basic levels, what it means to be human.
Handsomely illustrated with striking, sometimes shocking, often poignant images, this book combines the depictions of momentous events with fascinating character portraits and arresting eyewitness accounts to create an absorbing, multifaceted chronicle of a sobering all too human legacy.
Engrossing in their descriptions of diverse historical periods and cultures, intriguing in their insights into human impulses and motivations, perplexing in their implications, these are stories that lead us to reflect on our own character and strength of will, and to question, at the most basic levels, what it means to be human.
Handsomely illustrated with striking, sometimes shocking, often poignant images, this book combines the depictions of momentous events with fascinating character portraits and arresting eyewitness accounts to create an absorbing, multifaceted chronicle of a sobering all too human legacy.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
7 people are currently reading
177 people want to read
About the author
Joseph Cummins
57 books32 followersJoseph Cummins is the author of numerous books, including Anything for a Vote: Dirty Tricks, Cheap Shots and October Surprises in U.S. Presidential Elections; A Bloody History of the World, which won the 2010 Our History Project Gold Medal Award; and the forthcoming Ten Tea Parties: Patriotic Protests That History Forgot. He lives in Maplewood, New Jersey, with his wife and daughter.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
January 10, 2010
THE WORLDS BLOODIEST HISTORY: Massacre, Genocide and the scars they left on Civilization
By JOSEPH CUMMINS
Fairwinds Press, 319 pages
It is hard to describe a book with this title or its subject matter as a great read, much less an enjoyable book. However that is what Joseph Cummins did…..I am talking 5 stars, straight through the uprights, 3 points and nothin’ but net.
Ok, let me explain from a Reviewer/Reader stand point. I receive a lot of books to review and sometimes I receive a book that is sound, has a good looking cover and it draws me in somehow. I read the first two chapters. If it holds my attention I keep going, if not it’s to the center of the book I go for a middle chapter or two then two the last couple of chapters. By then I have gauged the quality and the intent, and have a solid foundation to judge (in my personal opinion) that its good, bad or average.
As an Historian and Researcher, I am looking for the complete story. I am looking for primary and secondary sources to back up that story(s). I am looking for names, dates, events and witnesses that can tell the story. And, though it is hard I am looking for the mind set, or both sides of the story, kind of the story behind the story if you will.
The World’s Bloodiest History was one of those books I could not put down. I actually read it over and over and went on my own researching quest behind the stories after each chapter. Now, that is something that no other book in my history of reading has compelled me to do…None, Nada, Zip. Not after each chapter.
What does this book that I am raving about have in it? Why am I so engrossed within the pages? Well, as the title states it’s the world’s bloodiest history. It covers eighteen (18) events that truly impacted the world and thier countries for generations. It is a book about racial and secular superiority. It is a book about greed and hate. It is a book about intolerance. It is a book about so many things, feelings, thoughts and actions. However, it is a book about hope, knowledge and courage to stand up to say this will not happen again. We actually did our interview with Joseph Cummins a couple of months ago and it was aired on OHP in December. Guess what, I’m still reading it.
What I love about this book is that for each chapter, you may not know a thing about the events, lets take the “Colfax Massacre” for instance. This was one of the stories that I did not know. Written with in that chapter there are eighteen (18) pages that cover the event and tragedy. The unbelievable part is….when I finished those eighteen (18) pages, I actually knew the who, what, when, where, why and how of that story. Imagine, each chapter is like that. Yes, every one. From the Carthaginians in 146 BCE to the Massacre at Srebrenica, its there and you will have a grounded understanding of each event when your done.
If you are like me…. it just may be a book that never ends. Pick it up, borrow it, check it out, download it; however you can get it, this is a book that you will want to read…and never completely put down.
Craig Anderson
Our History Project
Joseph Cummins
By JOSEPH CUMMINS
Fairwinds Press, 319 pages
It is hard to describe a book with this title or its subject matter as a great read, much less an enjoyable book. However that is what Joseph Cummins did…..I am talking 5 stars, straight through the uprights, 3 points and nothin’ but net.
Ok, let me explain from a Reviewer/Reader stand point. I receive a lot of books to review and sometimes I receive a book that is sound, has a good looking cover and it draws me in somehow. I read the first two chapters. If it holds my attention I keep going, if not it’s to the center of the book I go for a middle chapter or two then two the last couple of chapters. By then I have gauged the quality and the intent, and have a solid foundation to judge (in my personal opinion) that its good, bad or average.
As an Historian and Researcher, I am looking for the complete story. I am looking for primary and secondary sources to back up that story(s). I am looking for names, dates, events and witnesses that can tell the story. And, though it is hard I am looking for the mind set, or both sides of the story, kind of the story behind the story if you will.
The World’s Bloodiest History was one of those books I could not put down. I actually read it over and over and went on my own researching quest behind the stories after each chapter. Now, that is something that no other book in my history of reading has compelled me to do…None, Nada, Zip. Not after each chapter.
What does this book that I am raving about have in it? Why am I so engrossed within the pages? Well, as the title states it’s the world’s bloodiest history. It covers eighteen (18) events that truly impacted the world and thier countries for generations. It is a book about racial and secular superiority. It is a book about greed and hate. It is a book about intolerance. It is a book about so many things, feelings, thoughts and actions. However, it is a book about hope, knowledge and courage to stand up to say this will not happen again. We actually did our interview with Joseph Cummins a couple of months ago and it was aired on OHP in December. Guess what, I’m still reading it.
What I love about this book is that for each chapter, you may not know a thing about the events, lets take the “Colfax Massacre” for instance. This was one of the stories that I did not know. Written with in that chapter there are eighteen (18) pages that cover the event and tragedy. The unbelievable part is….when I finished those eighteen (18) pages, I actually knew the who, what, when, where, why and how of that story. Imagine, each chapter is like that. Yes, every one. From the Carthaginians in 146 BCE to the Massacre at Srebrenica, its there and you will have a grounded understanding of each event when your done.
If you are like me…. it just may be a book that never ends. Pick it up, borrow it, check it out, download it; however you can get it, this is a book that you will want to read…and never completely put down.
Craig Anderson
Our History Project
Joseph Cummins
February 19, 2016
Read in doses. If you read too much in one sitting it makes you think that humanity is mostly really awful. There are some truly vomit-inducing moments throughout. I would read a chapter and have to watch happy videos to remind myself that humanity is generally good, so it took me a while to get through. It's well-written though, and it has a good amount of appropriate photos (though gruesome, they made me more aware of the situation) and firsthand accounts from survivors and killers.
November 26, 2023
This book is truly a hard book to read, not because it wasn’t well written – because it was a simple, easy to consume book – but because of the subject matter. From the first genocide in 140 BCE to the massacre in Srebrenica in the mid 1990’s. Consider all the horrible situations where civilization failed: Massacre of Mexica in 1521, the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre on August 24, 1572, Bloody Sunday in Louisiana in 1873, the Armenian Genocide of the early 1900’s, the killings in the Katyni Forest in 1940, South Africa’s Shootings at Sharpeville in 1960, My Lai Massacre in the Viet Nam War in 1968, the Cambodian Genocide from 1975-1979, and the 100-day madness in Rwandan in 1994. Yes, this is not a feel-good book.
Many of these annihilations are well known – the Armenian Genocide, My Lai, the Russian mass assassinations of Polish military leaders, Sharpeville incident that ultimately led to freedom in South Africa, the Cambodian genocide but others were ones I just read about or read more than I had in the past. The author did a fine job reviewing in great detail yet in a general, efficient manner. Having read some books on specific genocide – the holocaust, Armenian Genocide, the Katyni Forest, My Lai, and the Rwandan genocide, I still learned more while reading those chapters.
What was probably most shocking is how much is known of many of these genocides, including the first one over 2,000 years ago. Starting with the Third Punic War, the hatred of the Romans and the Carthaginians built. 50,000 Romans were killed in one day, the largest number of people killed in war in one day until WWII. What the author pointed out is that most of these people were killed by hand with swords and spears. Revenge was brutal. When the Romans later had the Carthage’s on the run and they refused to surrender, the Romans killed anyone they could, decapitating them and throwing babies into flames and raping women before they were torn apart. Anyone surviving the carnage was sold into slavery.
As the title of the book mentions, these exterminations often change conditions for centuries. When Catholics suddenly murdered their protestant neighbors on August 24, 1572, in what was known as the ST. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, it separated Catholic and Protestant Churches for centuries – and was just mentioned by the current pope. These religious people did things that are unimaginable including baptizing infants by the blood of their parents who were just killed – then the Catholics killed the babies. Catholics wore white arm bands since that was really the only way to show the difference in these Paris residents. As a gift, Pope Gregory XIII was sent the head of Admiral Coligny.
The small country of Rwandan held a similar attack on people who shared more similarities than differences when the Hutu radicals turned on their Tutsi neighbors and killed 800,000 in four weeks starting in April 1994. Consider: there was no real difference between the two peoples since they shared a common language, faith, and cultural heritage. There was considerable intermarriage. The main difference was that the Hutus were usually wealthier. When in control of the country, the Belgians separated the two tribes by issuing identification cards in 1933 to lock in the differences and separate the population for their own use. Like with other genocides, this one was secretary planned but took place mostly through slaughter with machetes, chopping up bodies in front of children before they were also killed. Within weeks, 75% of the Tutsi population was eliminated in a systematic manner.
While we are reading every day about the quest for justice in Ukraine, this book reminded us of the two-day attack by a German special execution unit killing 33,000 Jews outside of Kiev. The German government had established killing squads known as Einsatzgruppen to exterminate entire Jewish communities in Ukraine, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia before moving to a more efficient model with the ovens. While some of the SS men got hysterical carrying out their orders to murder men, women, and children, others carried out their commands in a silent, eerie obedience. When the German army got to Kiev, perhaps 150,000 of the Jews migrated to escape the violence. The increased antisemitic activities allowed for the Ukrainians to participate in the scapegoating of the Jews and permitted the German SS to take the Jews to a mass grave dug by the Jews and shoot them one by one then tossing babies into the pit of killed humanity. The pictures of the cold-blooded killing was hard to view and the accounting of the few survivors was even more difficult to read.
The book also covered a part of American history that I didn’t know about despite reading many books on American history and racial issues within our country. On Easter Sunday, Black freedmen were massacred when surrendering to members of the KKK and other former Confederate soldiers. Other Americans who were black were assassinated after being held and further others were hunted down while trying to escape. No one knows just how many Americans who were African Americans were killed but the range is between 62 and 153 but it is known that three white Americans were killed in the fighting. The case went before the U.S. Supreme Court, with the white justices siding with the racists, allowing further attacks on freed African Americans, using violence and intimidation to wrestle democracy away from the south.
Cumins’ book demonstrate that humanity can break down off of all kinds of divisions and old scores, creating an environment where the unimaginable can occur. Repeatedly it is planned, systematic, and brutal. Then, usually denied. Even the United States didn’t immediately call the senseless killing in Bosnia genocide and just recently labeled the genocide of the Armenians correctly.
And for various reasons, the world can look the other way or be slow in responding. Possibly it’s force, or not knowing what is happening. Sometimes countries that should get involved have their own selfish reasons to let the fighting take place. When people engage in genocide, they are trying to wipe our not just the civilization but the culture as we saw with the Romans ridding the world of the Carthaginians to the Nazis first going after the culture of the Jews before trying to completely exterminate them to in Bosnia when the Serbs attempted to eliminate the Muslims.
Repeatedly, Cummins raised the use of rape as a way to violate the community being attacked. While I knew that rape often followed attacks on people for centuries, the degree it is baked into these catastrophes is beyond comprehension. Rape was also used when the massacres were led by religious leaders, such as the Mountain Meadows Massacre in Utah in 1857. According to witnesses, two teens were raped by Mormons then shot even though the two begged for their lives after being raped and promised to “love him forever” if they were allowed to live. During the Armenian genocide, the Young Turks recruited Kurd's to a Special Organization killers who raped and robbed Armenians before killing them to eliminate the population. Probably the most outrageous arrangement covered in this book was in Bosnia where the government established eighty “rape camps” where women as young as 13 into their 60’s were held purposely to be raped repeatedly by soldiers of Serbian leader Radovan Karadzic and Serbian Army General Ratko Mladic.
This book would never be easy to read but has a long-time lesson, especially important today when our newspapers are filled with horrific violent activities from Puttin’s Russia against the Ukraine, killing people and trying to wipe out their culture, and what is happening today in Israel. It would have been helpful for the author to include chapter on how to realize the start of what might turn out to be the development of a genocide, common issues, and what our world leaders need to do to stop the next one.
Many of these annihilations are well known – the Armenian Genocide, My Lai, the Russian mass assassinations of Polish military leaders, Sharpeville incident that ultimately led to freedom in South Africa, the Cambodian genocide but others were ones I just read about or read more than I had in the past. The author did a fine job reviewing in great detail yet in a general, efficient manner. Having read some books on specific genocide – the holocaust, Armenian Genocide, the Katyni Forest, My Lai, and the Rwandan genocide, I still learned more while reading those chapters.
What was probably most shocking is how much is known of many of these genocides, including the first one over 2,000 years ago. Starting with the Third Punic War, the hatred of the Romans and the Carthaginians built. 50,000 Romans were killed in one day, the largest number of people killed in war in one day until WWII. What the author pointed out is that most of these people were killed by hand with swords and spears. Revenge was brutal. When the Romans later had the Carthage’s on the run and they refused to surrender, the Romans killed anyone they could, decapitating them and throwing babies into flames and raping women before they were torn apart. Anyone surviving the carnage was sold into slavery.
As the title of the book mentions, these exterminations often change conditions for centuries. When Catholics suddenly murdered their protestant neighbors on August 24, 1572, in what was known as the ST. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, it separated Catholic and Protestant Churches for centuries – and was just mentioned by the current pope. These religious people did things that are unimaginable including baptizing infants by the blood of their parents who were just killed – then the Catholics killed the babies. Catholics wore white arm bands since that was really the only way to show the difference in these Paris residents. As a gift, Pope Gregory XIII was sent the head of Admiral Coligny.
The small country of Rwandan held a similar attack on people who shared more similarities than differences when the Hutu radicals turned on their Tutsi neighbors and killed 800,000 in four weeks starting in April 1994. Consider: there was no real difference between the two peoples since they shared a common language, faith, and cultural heritage. There was considerable intermarriage. The main difference was that the Hutus were usually wealthier. When in control of the country, the Belgians separated the two tribes by issuing identification cards in 1933 to lock in the differences and separate the population for their own use. Like with other genocides, this one was secretary planned but took place mostly through slaughter with machetes, chopping up bodies in front of children before they were also killed. Within weeks, 75% of the Tutsi population was eliminated in a systematic manner.
While we are reading every day about the quest for justice in Ukraine, this book reminded us of the two-day attack by a German special execution unit killing 33,000 Jews outside of Kiev. The German government had established killing squads known as Einsatzgruppen to exterminate entire Jewish communities in Ukraine, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia before moving to a more efficient model with the ovens. While some of the SS men got hysterical carrying out their orders to murder men, women, and children, others carried out their commands in a silent, eerie obedience. When the German army got to Kiev, perhaps 150,000 of the Jews migrated to escape the violence. The increased antisemitic activities allowed for the Ukrainians to participate in the scapegoating of the Jews and permitted the German SS to take the Jews to a mass grave dug by the Jews and shoot them one by one then tossing babies into the pit of killed humanity. The pictures of the cold-blooded killing was hard to view and the accounting of the few survivors was even more difficult to read.
The book also covered a part of American history that I didn’t know about despite reading many books on American history and racial issues within our country. On Easter Sunday, Black freedmen were massacred when surrendering to members of the KKK and other former Confederate soldiers. Other Americans who were black were assassinated after being held and further others were hunted down while trying to escape. No one knows just how many Americans who were African Americans were killed but the range is between 62 and 153 but it is known that three white Americans were killed in the fighting. The case went before the U.S. Supreme Court, with the white justices siding with the racists, allowing further attacks on freed African Americans, using violence and intimidation to wrestle democracy away from the south.
Cumins’ book demonstrate that humanity can break down off of all kinds of divisions and old scores, creating an environment where the unimaginable can occur. Repeatedly it is planned, systematic, and brutal. Then, usually denied. Even the United States didn’t immediately call the senseless killing in Bosnia genocide and just recently labeled the genocide of the Armenians correctly.
And for various reasons, the world can look the other way or be slow in responding. Possibly it’s force, or not knowing what is happening. Sometimes countries that should get involved have their own selfish reasons to let the fighting take place. When people engage in genocide, they are trying to wipe our not just the civilization but the culture as we saw with the Romans ridding the world of the Carthaginians to the Nazis first going after the culture of the Jews before trying to completely exterminate them to in Bosnia when the Serbs attempted to eliminate the Muslims.
Repeatedly, Cummins raised the use of rape as a way to violate the community being attacked. While I knew that rape often followed attacks on people for centuries, the degree it is baked into these catastrophes is beyond comprehension. Rape was also used when the massacres were led by religious leaders, such as the Mountain Meadows Massacre in Utah in 1857. According to witnesses, two teens were raped by Mormons then shot even though the two begged for their lives after being raped and promised to “love him forever” if they were allowed to live. During the Armenian genocide, the Young Turks recruited Kurd's to a Special Organization killers who raped and robbed Armenians before killing them to eliminate the population. Probably the most outrageous arrangement covered in this book was in Bosnia where the government established eighty “rape camps” where women as young as 13 into their 60’s were held purposely to be raped repeatedly by soldiers of Serbian leader Radovan Karadzic and Serbian Army General Ratko Mladic.
This book would never be easy to read but has a long-time lesson, especially important today when our newspapers are filled with horrific violent activities from Puttin’s Russia against the Ukraine, killing people and trying to wipe out their culture, and what is happening today in Israel. It would have been helpful for the author to include chapter on how to realize the start of what might turn out to be the development of a genocide, common issues, and what our world leaders need to do to stop the next one.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 20, 2013
There were so many instances of massacre and genocide that I knew nothing about --- even the ones which happened in my own lifetime. When you're a kid or young adult, you generally don't pay a whole lot of attention to world-wide events, and history class in school glosses over so many things. I'm glad I took the time to read this, even though parts were hard to read.
September 22, 2015
If a book on genocide could even be described as 'very good' then this book fits the bill. At times nauseating (both the narrative and the photos) it is primarily written from second source material. The author also includes a bibliography from which the reader can learn further.
May 8, 2012
we live in a world full of bloody cruel history!
January 15, 2014
I really liked this book because it described the events that led up to each event, including a look at the commanders/important people that fueled the hate and fear that brought each event about.
January 18, 2020
This is a difficult book to rate as "I 'Liked' it", but in some important ways it was worth the time, effort and emotional assault. I had not known about the horrific Armenian genocide in the early 1900's by the Turks which equaled in number of deaths of those in Nazi concentration camps. There were other massacre's recorded in this book of many nations and periods of history. I was reminded (if I needed it) that humans are not going to fix themselves and make the world/culture/society all right again. It will require something bigger and better than ourselves.Thank God that option is credibly available to every person by faith/trust in the forgiveness and kingship of Jesus Christ. Otherwise were would hope truly exist. "I say to myself, 'The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him' The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord."Lam 3:24-26 so setting my focus on that which is good, lovely, praiseworthy, true, etc. let the aim be loving the Lord God with all my heart, mind soul and strength and my neighbor as myself.
Read
July 31, 2023Disturbing history of numerous massacres, genocides, and infamous crimes throughout history, starting in 1572 with the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, when French Catholics tried to wipe out the Huguenots. The terrible list goes from the Armenian genocide to Babi Yar, Rwanda, and the war in Bosnia, but also includes the massacre of American soldiers by the Waffen SS at Malmedy in 1944 and the Black Hole of Calcutta in 1757 that eventually led to the complete British takeover of India. This book is important because it chronicles people's inhumanity to others, and the necessity of remembering the past so we don't repeat it.
December 24, 2019
A depressing, but gripping account of history's most infamous genocides, along with a number of lesser-known massacres and war crimes. Not much in the way of analysis here, just a straightforward chronicle of man's inhumanity to man. Highly informative, but best read in small doses.
July 24, 2020
If you want to learn a lot but be really sad, this is the book for you.
August 1, 2020
A brilliant narrative history of violence - especially of “Black Hole of Calcutta”, Fall of Carthage, Katyn and more.
Read
July 16, 2012Creepy but informative. Some of the pictures are very disturbing.
May 1, 2017
I liked it.
I like history and I like to know how and why the vs happened.
I like history and I like to know how and why the vs happened.
June 4, 2018
we live in a world full of bloody cruel history!
June 29, 2018
Better read in small doses.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews