What do you think?
Rate this book
Marea carte a inumanității: o istorie a ororilor în 100 de episoade
Matthew White s-a înhămat la o întreprindere pe care nici un istoric de profesie nu şi-a asumat-o până acum: aceea de a selecta din mulţimea de hecatombe cu care este presărată istoria cele o sută de atrocităţi care au făcut cel mai mare număr de victime. Pornind de la războaiele medice şi ajungând până la Africa zilelor noastre, White ne oferă o istorie a omenirii axată pe marile mase fără nume care au tras mereu ponoasele de pe urma ambiţiilor conducătorilor lor: greci, chinezi şi azteci, germani, englezi şi ruşi sunt prinşi într-o suită nesfârşită de campanii de cucerire, conflicte civile, epurări etnice sau războaie coloniale.
Din învălmăşeala evenimentelor se desprind fapte curioase şi concluzii surprinzătoare. Haosul se dovedeşte a fi mai ucigător decât tirania. Pe timp de război e mai sigur să fii în armată decât să faci parte din populaţia civilă. Spre deosebire de celelalte ţări cu populaţie numeroasă, India a pornit rareori războaie de cucerire. Adesea, marii dictatori nu s-au născut în sânul naţiunii pe care au condus-o apoi cu mână de fier: Napoleon era corsican, Stalin – georgian, Hitler – austriac.
Deşi are în spate un efort enorm de documentare, cartea nu sacrifică fluenţa naraţiunii pe altarul discursului academic. Mathew White ştie să povestească despre oameni şi locuri şi să ofere statistici fără să rămână împotmolit în ele. Nu ţine predici, ci lasă faptele să vorbească şi se mărgineşte să condamne barbaria cu armele ironiei, de vreme ce inumanitatea, laitmotivul acestei istorii a umanităţii, transpare de la sine.
Din învălmăşeala evenimentelor se desprind fapte curioase şi concluzii surprinzătoare. Haosul se dovedeşte a fi mai ucigător decât tirania. Pe timp de război e mai sigur să fii în armată decât să faci parte din populaţia civilă. Spre deosebire de celelalte ţări cu populaţie numeroasă, India a pornit rareori războaie de cucerire. Adesea, marii dictatori nu s-au născut în sânul naţiunii pe care au condus-o apoi cu mână de fier: Napoleon era corsican, Stalin – georgian, Hitler – austriac.
Deşi are în spate un efort enorm de documentare, cartea nu sacrifică fluenţa naraţiunii pe altarul discursului academic. Mathew White ştie să povestească despre oameni şi locuri şi să ofere statistici fără să rămână împotmolit în ele. Nu ţine predici, ci lasă faptele să vorbească şi se mărgineşte să condamne barbaria cu armele ironiei, de vreme ce inumanitatea, laitmotivul acestei istorii a umanităţii, transpare de la sine.
812 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
246 people are currently reading
4451 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 162 reviews
March 27, 2017
This book isn't in the best possible taste. Like one of those countdown programmes on cheesy tv - 2016's 100 Most Shocking Celebrity Moments - it ranks massacres, wars and man-made catastrophes of limitless human suffering and discusses them all in a slightly unnerving jokey chatty unhistorianlike manner :
The Germans had come so close to winning the First World War they couldn't believe they didn't.
Communism lasted longer than fascism, jazz, John Wayne, Bonanza and the American Motor Corporation.
Believe me, I don't want to discuss Shaka's penis any more than you want to read about it
It's not all like this, the rest of it is breathlessly potted history - there's more history in this book than 20 others put together, and often very obscure history too - and naturally the poor reader is going to suffer from factual brain overload if he reads this from page 1 to page 565,
so this is for dipping into.
But who wants to dip in and read about an event which caused the death of 2 million people and rates 18 on Matthew White's list? Er, so what's this book for? To settle really morbid pub arguments?
"Derek, I think you will find that the Haitian Slave Revolt killed far more people than the Albigensian Crusade."
"Marjorie, Marjorie - before we go any further I think we should consult our well-thumbed copy of Atrocitology, don't you?"
The best parts of this odd book are the essays thrown into the mix. Here are some interesting conclusions from Mr White, who has thought about men, women and children dying in huge numbers more than is surely healthy for anyone -
1. Chaos is deadlier than tyranny.
2. The world is very disorganised - soldiers and nations change sides in the middle of wars, it's often hard to tell where one nation stops and another starts, and same goes with actual wars.
3. War kills more civilians than soldiers and more people than oppressive governments do. This last point will not please libertarians.
4. If you are a tyrant who has killed millions (you know who you are out there in Goodreadsland), you have a 49% chance of dying peacefully whilst still in power and an 11% chance of retiring from office and dying peacefully in retirement. The rest of you will be shot. That's not bad odds.
5. Let's hear it for India and Hinduism - the most peaceful nation & religion, based on its nearly complete absence in these pages. The only atrocities inflicted in India have been by non-Hindus.
The Germans had come so close to winning the First World War they couldn't believe they didn't.
Communism lasted longer than fascism, jazz, John Wayne, Bonanza and the American Motor Corporation.
Believe me, I don't want to discuss Shaka's penis any more than you want to read about it
It's not all like this, the rest of it is breathlessly potted history - there's more history in this book than 20 others put together, and often very obscure history too - and naturally the poor reader is going to suffer from factual brain overload if he reads this from page 1 to page 565,
so this is for dipping into.
But who wants to dip in and read about an event which caused the death of 2 million people and rates 18 on Matthew White's list? Er, so what's this book for? To settle really morbid pub arguments?
"Derek, I think you will find that the Haitian Slave Revolt killed far more people than the Albigensian Crusade."
"Marjorie, Marjorie - before we go any further I think we should consult our well-thumbed copy of Atrocitology, don't you?"
The best parts of this odd book are the essays thrown into the mix. Here are some interesting conclusions from Mr White, who has thought about men, women and children dying in huge numbers more than is surely healthy for anyone -
1. Chaos is deadlier than tyranny.
2. The world is very disorganised - soldiers and nations change sides in the middle of wars, it's often hard to tell where one nation stops and another starts, and same goes with actual wars.
3. War kills more civilians than soldiers and more people than oppressive governments do. This last point will not please libertarians.
4. If you are a tyrant who has killed millions (you know who you are out there in Goodreadsland), you have a 49% chance of dying peacefully whilst still in power and an 11% chance of retiring from office and dying peacefully in retirement. The rest of you will be shot. That's not bad odds.
5. Let's hear it for India and Hinduism - the most peaceful nation & religion, based on its nearly complete absence in these pages. The only atrocities inflicted in India have been by non-Hindus.
October 26, 2011
You know that scene in Maus Part II when Art Spiegelman, seated at his drawing board, is perched high up on a Holocaust bodypile? Okay. Matthew White is made of something *steely* because this man's work has him sitting on top of not just *a* tragic body pile, but *the* tragic body pile, the ENTIRE HUMAN BODYPILE. And I just spent the last couple of evenings mountaineering with him to the human bodypile's damnable peak. From up here, let me tell you what it was like: I was impressed because I am not a real historian (The hemoclysm? I had never or barely heard of that theory!), so of course I was impressed that Matthew White took the trouble of making, like, all of history completely accessible to me (because, depressing side note, it turns out that when you are laser focusing on the history of human-induced mass death, you are actually taking it upon yourself to tell most of what there is to tell of human history), but I was also impressed because of Matthew White's steely-eyed, steady-handed determination to number the numberless atrocities of man, but in this stubbornly charming way. He refuses to be grim in the face of the unfaceable, but at the same time made me aware that cannibalism is A LOT less taboo than anyone would like to admit. So, yeah, this book is weird, and important, and long, and it makes all of the death seem strangely connected, and you don't know if the sense of connection means we are perpetually doomed or close to enlightenment. Or what. I recommend it.
September 2, 2024
Un compendiu de istorie axat pe cele mai multe atrocități provocate de om. Marea majoritate le-am știut, mai puțin multele luptele de putere dintre dinastiile chineze și nesfârșitele războaie civile din Africa postcolonială. O lectură instructivă, lejeră, lipsită de academism sforăitor, presărată și cu oleacă de umor. Recomand tuturor iubitorilor de istorie.
December 29, 2011
I expected to be utterly depressed throughout my reading of this fascinating trip down Atrocity Lane, but instead I found myself enthralled by the history being presented to me and the different way it was being presented. Though the sordid history of humanity is quite the cautionary tale in how we fail to treat each other in the ways in which we wish them to treat us, from slavery to warfare to acts of genocide to politically and racially induced famines, "The Great Big Book of Horrible Things" is far from boring or dry. There is an energy and an excitement in the writing of Mr. White; he prevents the subject matter from being bogged down by just statistics. In short, he refutes to habit of historians in labeling the hundreds of millions of deaths discussed in this book as "mere" statistics. Enjoy, if it is possible to enjoy reading about the deaths of 460+ million people, then "The Great Big Book of Horrible Things" makes it possible.
April 4, 2013
-Sistematizar datos para obtener información, especialmente en algunos temas, es francamente loable, por terrible que sea el asunto-.
Género. Ensayo.
Lo que nos cuenta. Tras explicarnos el autor su idea, intención y método respecto a la identificación de las mayores matanzas de la Historia, nos embarcamos en un viaje que nos llevará a través de 25 siglos desde la Segunda Guerra Médica hasta la Segunda Guerra del Congo, en el que se nos relatan los hechos más relevantes de cada uno de los acontecimientos retratados y se nos explica su posición en su terrible “Top 100” de la muerte.
¿Quiere saber más del libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
Género. Ensayo.
Lo que nos cuenta. Tras explicarnos el autor su idea, intención y método respecto a la identificación de las mayores matanzas de la Historia, nos embarcamos en un viaje que nos llevará a través de 25 siglos desde la Segunda Guerra Médica hasta la Segunda Guerra del Congo, en el que se nos relatan los hechos más relevantes de cada uno de los acontecimientos retratados y se nos explica su posición en su terrible “Top 100” de la muerte.
¿Quiere saber más del libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
April 4, 2013
-Sistematizar datos para obtener información, especialmente en algunos temas, es francamente loable, por terrible que sea el asunto-.
Género. Ensayo.
Lo que nos cuenta. Tras explicarnos el autor su idea, intención y método respecto a la identificación de las mayores matanzas de la Historia, nos embarcamos en un viaje que nos llevará a través de 25 siglos desde la Segunda Guerra Médica hasta la Segunda Guerra del Congo, en el que se nos relatan los hechos más relevantes de cada uno de los acontecimientos retratados y se nos explica su posición en su terrible “Top 100” de la muerte.
¿Quiere saber más del libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
Género. Ensayo.
Lo que nos cuenta. Tras explicarnos el autor su idea, intención y método respecto a la identificación de las mayores matanzas de la Historia, nos embarcamos en un viaje que nos llevará a través de 25 siglos desde la Segunda Guerra Médica hasta la Segunda Guerra del Congo, en el que se nos relatan los hechos más relevantes de cada uno de los acontecimientos retratados y se nos explica su posición en su terrible “Top 100” de la muerte.
¿Quiere saber más del libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
September 13, 2016
I know a lot of people can be heavily offended by the tone of this book. I wasn't. I couldn't be. Researching evil people and understanding war, torture, man-induced famine from a psychological point of wiew is what I do every day. This is not an offensive work - gasping and bowing your head in pain and shame everytime you hear the word "gang rape" or "Holocaust" is not a sign of caring more for the subject than someone who is very clinically exposing the truth behind (and of) them. For the ammount of information I got out of this and the succint way in which terrible events have been written about and reduced to their clinical cause and effect, this is a five star for me. There's other works out there emotionally careful enough for anyone who is into that.
January 20, 2012
The first thing you need to know about The Great Big Book of Horrible things is, you're going to not only learn things, but you'll at times be embarrassed about the things you know almost nothing about. The worst genocide since the Holocaust occurred in Bangladesh in 1971? The bloodiest war since WWII, the Second Congo War, ended less than ten years ago, and nobody in the United States noticed? 20 million Indians died in the 1800s due to famines that the British didn't want to respond to?
Makes you rethink how informed you are.
The premise of the work is simple; an overview of the 100 worst things, by bodycount, humanity has ever inflicted on itself. It's quite a piece of work: Matthew White did his homework, going over events famous and obscure with a voice that is engaging and lively, somehow able to convey the horror of, say, the 30 Years war (the bloodiest conflict in Europe until WWI) without making you unable to keep going, respectful of the dead (he insists you remember that the postwar "peace" of the cold war claimed 11 million lives by his reckoning), but not without humor ("In any case, the thing to remember about Dorgon is that, unlike his fellow Manchus, he has a great name for a barbarian warlord. Go on; say it out loud: Dorgon the Barbarian")
What makes things more intriguing is that, while some of the topics are the obvious ones, (World War 2, Stalin), others you wouldn't have expected until you find them present. The Gladiatorial Games, for example. It's hard to think that such a thing would stack up against real wars, but the Games saw 3.5 million die over 600 years. It's all about perspective.
And that's what the Great Big Book offers: perspective. People have been terrible to people ever since we became people; his estimate that 3% of all deaths in the 20th century were due to man is tempered by the fact that 15% of deaths in tribal societies were violent. He doesn't offer optimism, exactly; but it's possible to make some from his work.
Makes you rethink how informed you are.
The premise of the work is simple; an overview of the 100 worst things, by bodycount, humanity has ever inflicted on itself. It's quite a piece of work: Matthew White did his homework, going over events famous and obscure with a voice that is engaging and lively, somehow able to convey the horror of, say, the 30 Years war (the bloodiest conflict in Europe until WWI) without making you unable to keep going, respectful of the dead (he insists you remember that the postwar "peace" of the cold war claimed 11 million lives by his reckoning), but not without humor ("In any case, the thing to remember about Dorgon is that, unlike his fellow Manchus, he has a great name for a barbarian warlord. Go on; say it out loud: Dorgon the Barbarian")
What makes things more intriguing is that, while some of the topics are the obvious ones, (World War 2, Stalin), others you wouldn't have expected until you find them present. The Gladiatorial Games, for example. It's hard to think that such a thing would stack up against real wars, but the Games saw 3.5 million die over 600 years. It's all about perspective.
And that's what the Great Big Book offers: perspective. People have been terrible to people ever since we became people; his estimate that 3% of all deaths in the 20th century were due to man is tempered by the fact that 15% of deaths in tribal societies were violent. He doesn't offer optimism, exactly; but it's possible to make some from his work.
November 19, 2018
Tengo que confesar que me ha encantado.
El tema es duro, claro, pero no cae en el morbo. Está narrado de forma amena y didáctica, incluso con algún toque de humor. Se aprende muchísimo.
Muy recomendable.
El tema es duro, claro, pero no cae en el morbo. Está narrado de forma amena y didáctica, incluso con algún toque de humor. Se aprende muchísimo.
Muy recomendable.
January 31, 2016
Pierdere de timp. Nu inteleg de ce ai citi o astfel de carte. E ca si cum ti-ai propune sa citesti DOOM-ul sau DEX-ul de la cap la coada.
Genul de enciclopedii scrise de un singur om nu ma atrag nicicum. Nu stiu de ce am ales, totusi, sa-mi pierd timpul cu volumul lui White. Poate ca de vina-s sarbatorile de iarna...
Spicuiri din recenzia finala care se gaseste pe blogul meu
..........................................
Nu contează ce crede Pinker despre Marea carte a umanității și nici nu mă interesează, sincer să fiu, deoarece volumul lui White este o mare porcărie. În primul rând scriitura este jalnică. White nu știe cum să construiască nici cel mai simplu articol astfel încât să fie atractiv și interesant.
Dincolo de scriitura proastă, White, probabil mințit de același Pinker sau ceva prieteni răuvoitori, crede că are un simț al umorului aparte și decide să strecoare glumițe de doi lei în articolașele care trec în revistă zeci de mii sau milioane de morți. Ce să zic, e o carte câștigătoare care nu are cum să nu fie jucată de un autor inteligent și cu respect față de suferința și cruzimea pe care o trece cu o desăvârșită relaxare în revistă.
Avem scriitură la nivelul compunerilor de liceu și observații care se vor amuzante și care pot să fie amuzante doar pentru descreierați deoarece nu-mi imaginez cum o persoană întreagă la cap ar putea glumi în acest context. E ca și cum Lifton s-ar apuca să crack some jokes când vorbește despre medicii naziști care ucideau cu sânge rece copii în spitalele naziste sau în lagărele de concentrare. Sau Kershaw s-ar apuca să spună bancuri despre femeile germane care erau violate de soldații sovietici ș.a.m.d. Ce să zic, dacă o astfel de lucrare se bucură de laude și recomandări venite din partea unor nume mari din cultura contemporană înseamnă că avem o foarte mare problemă atât cu respectul față de atrocitățile care au înecat omenirea în sânge cât și cu simțul umorului care dă semne că este ușor handicapat.
.......................................
Genul de enciclopedii scrise de un singur om nu ma atrag nicicum. Nu stiu de ce am ales, totusi, sa-mi pierd timpul cu volumul lui White. Poate ca de vina-s sarbatorile de iarna...
Spicuiri din recenzia finala care se gaseste pe blogul meu
..........................................
Nu contează ce crede Pinker despre Marea carte a umanității și nici nu mă interesează, sincer să fiu, deoarece volumul lui White este o mare porcărie. În primul rând scriitura este jalnică. White nu știe cum să construiască nici cel mai simplu articol astfel încât să fie atractiv și interesant.
Dincolo de scriitura proastă, White, probabil mințit de același Pinker sau ceva prieteni răuvoitori, crede că are un simț al umorului aparte și decide să strecoare glumițe de doi lei în articolașele care trec în revistă zeci de mii sau milioane de morți. Ce să zic, e o carte câștigătoare care nu are cum să nu fie jucată de un autor inteligent și cu respect față de suferința și cruzimea pe care o trece cu o desăvârșită relaxare în revistă.
Avem scriitură la nivelul compunerilor de liceu și observații care se vor amuzante și care pot să fie amuzante doar pentru descreierați deoarece nu-mi imaginez cum o persoană întreagă la cap ar putea glumi în acest context. E ca și cum Lifton s-ar apuca să crack some jokes când vorbește despre medicii naziști care ucideau cu sânge rece copii în spitalele naziste sau în lagărele de concentrare. Sau Kershaw s-ar apuca să spună bancuri despre femeile germane care erau violate de soldații sovietici ș.a.m.d. Ce să zic, dacă o astfel de lucrare se bucură de laude și recomandări venite din partea unor nume mari din cultura contemporană înseamnă că avem o foarte mare problemă atât cu respectul față de atrocitățile care au înecat omenirea în sânge cât și cu simțul umorului care dă semne că este ușor handicapat.
.......................................
Read
December 17, 2018From the introduction:
"Aside from morbid fascination, is there any reason to know the one hundred highest body counts of history? Four reasons come to mind:
"First, things that happen to a lot of people are usually more important than things that happen to only a few people....
"Second, killing a person is the most you can do to him....
"Therefore, just by default, my one hundred multicides had a maximum impact on an enormous number of people. Without too much debate, I can easily label these to be among history's most significant events.
"....
"A third reason to consider is that we sometimes forget the human impact of historic events....
"The fourth and certainly most practical reason to gather body counts is for risk assessment and problem solving. If we study history to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, it helps to know what those mistakes were, and that includes ALL of the mistakes, not just the ones that support certain pet ideas." pg. xvi
"Despite my skepticism about any common thread running through all one hundred atrocities, I still found some interesting tendencies. Let me share with you the three biggest lessons I learned while working on this list:
"1. Chaos is deadlier than tyranny. More of these multicides result from the break-down of authority rather than the exercise of authority....
"2. The world is very disorganized. Power structures tend to be informal and temporary.... Most wars don't start neatly with declarations and mobilizations and end with surrenders and treaties.... Most nations are not as neatly delineated as you might expect....
"3. War kills more civilians than soldiers. In fact, the army is usually the safest place to be during a war...." pg. xvii
Herge's cartoon Tintin, and individual survival after mass atrocity
"Aside from morbid fascination, is there any reason to know the one hundred highest body counts of history? Four reasons come to mind:
"First, things that happen to a lot of people are usually more important than things that happen to only a few people....
"Second, killing a person is the most you can do to him....
"Therefore, just by default, my one hundred multicides had a maximum impact on an enormous number of people. Without too much debate, I can easily label these to be among history's most significant events.
"....
"A third reason to consider is that we sometimes forget the human impact of historic events....
"The fourth and certainly most practical reason to gather body counts is for risk assessment and problem solving. If we study history to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, it helps to know what those mistakes were, and that includes ALL of the mistakes, not just the ones that support certain pet ideas." pg. xvi
"Despite my skepticism about any common thread running through all one hundred atrocities, I still found some interesting tendencies. Let me share with you the three biggest lessons I learned while working on this list:
"1. Chaos is deadlier than tyranny. More of these multicides result from the break-down of authority rather than the exercise of authority....
"2. The world is very disorganized. Power structures tend to be informal and temporary.... Most wars don't start neatly with declarations and mobilizations and end with surrenders and treaties.... Most nations are not as neatly delineated as you might expect....
"3. War kills more civilians than soldiers. In fact, the army is usually the safest place to be during a war...." pg. xvii
Herge's cartoon Tintin, and individual survival after mass atrocity
May 10, 2013
-Sistematizar datos para obtener información, especialmente en algunos temas, es francamente loable, por terrible que sea el asunto-.
Género. Ensayo.
Lo que nos cuenta. Tras explicarnos el autor su idea, intención y método respecto a la identificación de las mayores matanzas de la Historia, nos embarcamos en un viaje que nos llevará a través de 25 siglos desde la Segunda Guerra Médica hasta la Segunda Guerra del Congo, en el que se nos relatan los hechos más relevantes de cada uno de los acontecimientos retratados y se nos explica su posición en su terrible “Top 100” de la muerte.
¿Quiere saber más del libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
Género. Ensayo.
Lo que nos cuenta. Tras explicarnos el autor su idea, intención y método respecto a la identificación de las mayores matanzas de la Historia, nos embarcamos en un viaje que nos llevará a través de 25 siglos desde la Segunda Guerra Médica hasta la Segunda Guerra del Congo, en el que se nos relatan los hechos más relevantes de cada uno de los acontecimientos retratados y se nos explica su posición en su terrible “Top 100” de la muerte.
¿Quiere saber más del libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
January 25, 2012
This book had a good chance of being dry and rambling, given the subject matter, but the author's tone and way of explaining each event kept me reading. White does not pin down a single cause for all of the horrible things in his great big book, which I liked. It is a bad historian that does that; a good historian recognizes that the world doesn't function in terms of black and white.
August 17, 2014
Essentially what you have hear is a concise yet surprisingly richly detailed, informative and intriguing encyclopaedia of the last three thousand years as told through a chronological rundown of events ranked by body count.
When I first picked this book up I was under the misunderstanding that it would be a collection of the most depraved examples of man's inhumanity towards their fellow man (or woman). Rather than basing his countdown of the most inhumane acts based on perceived depravity, cruelty or such like, the author neatly and sagely sidesteps such moralising and instead bases his compilation on the various acts throughout history with the highest body counts - usually with around 100,000 as a minimum.
This way there is no procrastinating on yet more discussions of various serial killers or modern terrorist attacks. As grievous as these acts undeniably are, in terms of blood shed they pale into insignificance in comparison to say any of the Punic Wars or Josef Stalin's reign of terror.
Another element of this book that is worthy of praise is the fact that although each section is usually around four sides, the level of detail and engaging way it is written, prevents this being at all a detrimental affair, actually giving you all the incentive and more you could want for looking deeper into certain events in history.
Obviously with a book covering a few thousand years there's only so much depth the author could go into for each "achievement" listed but even then, it doesn't feel like you're being given the absolute bare bones but enough to get your brain ticking over and cover the key points.
There are more than a few instances where there are certain niggles or wrinkles that seem to differ from other historical accounts, probably to satisfy the author's own political beliefs - such as saying that the population of Palestine in 1948 was 2 million, utterly glossing over the heavy state sponsored immigration of Zionist jews and flee into exile of millions of Palestinian Arabs, and not a single mention of Israel's ethnic cleansing of entire villages, massacres and war of attrition which gets dressed up as a 'war of independence'. For a book on bloodshed and inhumanity towards our fellow humans, there's a pretty glaring oversight not only dodging mentioning the more credible population figures but choosing to ignore the bloodshed and partisan violence that accompanied and enabled that 'independence'. For that reason it gets downgraded from a 4/5 to a 3, as such notable instances of bias kind of ruined the book for me.
For any lover of history or historical fiction, particularly the manly stuff - probably not those lovers of all that twee medieval romance guff - should find plenty to enjoy in this book.
Due to the extreme length of this book - almost 700 pages - I wouldn't recommend trying to read it all the way through though as you'll be there for quite some time. Far better to dip in and out if you want to stay conscious.
When I first picked this book up I was under the misunderstanding that it would be a collection of the most depraved examples of man's inhumanity towards their fellow man (or woman). Rather than basing his countdown of the most inhumane acts based on perceived depravity, cruelty or such like, the author neatly and sagely sidesteps such moralising and instead bases his compilation on the various acts throughout history with the highest body counts - usually with around 100,000 as a minimum.
This way there is no procrastinating on yet more discussions of various serial killers or modern terrorist attacks. As grievous as these acts undeniably are, in terms of blood shed they pale into insignificance in comparison to say any of the Punic Wars or Josef Stalin's reign of terror.
Another element of this book that is worthy of praise is the fact that although each section is usually around four sides, the level of detail and engaging way it is written, prevents this being at all a detrimental affair, actually giving you all the incentive and more you could want for looking deeper into certain events in history.
Obviously with a book covering a few thousand years there's only so much depth the author could go into for each "achievement" listed but even then, it doesn't feel like you're being given the absolute bare bones but enough to get your brain ticking over and cover the key points.
There are more than a few instances where there are certain niggles or wrinkles that seem to differ from other historical accounts, probably to satisfy the author's own political beliefs - such as saying that the population of Palestine in 1948 was 2 million, utterly glossing over the heavy state sponsored immigration of Zionist jews and flee into exile of millions of Palestinian Arabs, and not a single mention of Israel's ethnic cleansing of entire villages, massacres and war of attrition which gets dressed up as a 'war of independence'. For a book on bloodshed and inhumanity towards our fellow humans, there's a pretty glaring oversight not only dodging mentioning the more credible population figures but choosing to ignore the bloodshed and partisan violence that accompanied and enabled that 'independence'. For that reason it gets downgraded from a 4/5 to a 3, as such notable instances of bias kind of ruined the book for me.
For any lover of history or historical fiction, particularly the manly stuff - probably not those lovers of all that twee medieval romance guff - should find plenty to enjoy in this book.
Due to the extreme length of this book - almost 700 pages - I wouldn't recommend trying to read it all the way through though as you'll be there for quite some time. Far better to dip in and out if you want to stay conscious.
March 22, 2018
Reading with hopes of an article on the value of statistics in understanding human atrocity--especially for those (like me) who tend to favour personal stories and even fictionalized accounts over this kind of data. We'll see what develops...
(Also: this is a whopper of a book, and while I don't often read eBooks, this one is helpful to have in this format; scrolling and searching is much easier).
Update: ended up writing a post on this topic here: http://thinkchristian.net/the-good-th...
(Also: this is a whopper of a book, and while I don't often read eBooks, this one is helpful to have in this format; scrolling and searching is much easier).
Update: ended up writing a post on this topic here: http://thinkchristian.net/the-good-th...
June 27, 2017
After reading some other reviews, and considering the very sensational cover and title of this book, I was afraid it would be tasteless and of limited scientific value. I was pleasantly surprised that the humor was snarky, but not in juvenile, and that the research was scholarly in the good sense of the term. This is an excellent history book and a must-read for anyone seriously interested in democides. The scope of it is enormous, yet the descriptions feel complete. Even comparatively minor events, like the actions of John Rabe, have occasionally been mentioned. For a book that looks like the worst of popular history, there's a lot of historical background information and surprisingly few descriptions of particularly brutal murders (fewer than in Death by Government). Unlike certain other authors, White goes to great lengths to make his book understandable for people that don't know every dynasty in Europe and cannot pinpoint the exact borders of 17th century Bohemia on a map. Of course, with the tons of data that went into this, it can still be overwhelming at times if you have no prior knowledge of an event.
There are some things that irked me about this book. For example, on the chapter about the famines in India and Bengal, he mentions the free market several times, when his own descriptions make it clear that there was nothing "free" about the market at the time. When the government blocks or taxes imports and exports, takes control of the infrastructure and creates legal monopolies, we're talking about war socialism or mercantilism, not capitalism. That's simply the wrong word for it.
His idea on anti-communist theories are even more confused. He correctly concludes from the historical record that communism is not desirable. The democides, famines and wars speak a clear language, and he says as much. His claims that theoretical arguments against communism should not be trusted, or are superfluous, are completely false, however. That they can be trusted can be seen when you compare the predictions made by opponents of communism with the results of communism when it was implemented. Hayek predicted the tendency of regimes with a planned economy to isolate themselves and to try and make people equal. That's what we saw in every planned economy that took itself serious enough, before and after Hayeks prediction. Mises foresaw that abolishing price signals will lead to economic chaos and shortages, even before such policies were ever implemented, and we saw just that, too, in famine after famine. Most impressive is the little book Pictures of the Socialistic Future, which predicted just about every typical feature of communist countries over twenty years before the Russian Revolutions. That the communist regimes survived for a while does not prove these predictions wrong, as no regime ever went all the way and abolished all price signals permanently or tried to plan every aspect of production. The ones that went too far in that direction suffered horribly for it. The enormous industrial capacity of communist countries, likewise, doesn't prove men like Mises wrong, least of all because it's only half true. Russia and China managed to keep up with the West by giving intensive care to their industrial sector, while the West increasingly treated it like a step child. Seeing as Russia imported much of its industrial equipment at various times, I would also say that price signals were still effective to a degree. When theory and practice conform to such a degree, it's generally silly to deride one or the other.
White also made a small comment on how the Nazis weren't socialists any more than the North Koreans are democratic. His arguments on that point are wrong. The Nazis weren't just trying to catch the working class with their anti-capitalist rhetoric, they were very sincere about it. At multiple occasions did Hitler and his underlings make remarks to the effect that capital and private property had to serve the community and not just a privileged few. Their policies reflected this, what with the increasing control of private property by the state and its commissioners, and the confiscation of companies and capital that wasn't used to their liking. As Hayek noted in his book The Road to Serfdom, many Nazi intellectuals and leaders also started out as orthodox Marxists. All in all, I think the "Socialist" part of the name is deserved.
Even with these little problems, I'm giving this book a five star rating. A good intellectual challenge is a healthy thing, and I think Atrocitology will be a very good challenge to anyone with a strong political opinion. He's not using blatant lies and sophistry, he draws all his conclusions from an honest interpretation of generally reliable historical data. Whether you find that he's wrong or not, you will most likely be better off for considering his perspective.
There are some things that irked me about this book. For example, on the chapter about the famines in India and Bengal, he mentions the free market several times, when his own descriptions make it clear that there was nothing "free" about the market at the time. When the government blocks or taxes imports and exports, takes control of the infrastructure and creates legal monopolies, we're talking about war socialism or mercantilism, not capitalism. That's simply the wrong word for it.
His idea on anti-communist theories are even more confused. He correctly concludes from the historical record that communism is not desirable. The democides, famines and wars speak a clear language, and he says as much. His claims that theoretical arguments against communism should not be trusted, or are superfluous, are completely false, however. That they can be trusted can be seen when you compare the predictions made by opponents of communism with the results of communism when it was implemented. Hayek predicted the tendency of regimes with a planned economy to isolate themselves and to try and make people equal. That's what we saw in every planned economy that took itself serious enough, before and after Hayeks prediction. Mises foresaw that abolishing price signals will lead to economic chaos and shortages, even before such policies were ever implemented, and we saw just that, too, in famine after famine. Most impressive is the little book Pictures of the Socialistic Future, which predicted just about every typical feature of communist countries over twenty years before the Russian Revolutions. That the communist regimes survived for a while does not prove these predictions wrong, as no regime ever went all the way and abolished all price signals permanently or tried to plan every aspect of production. The ones that went too far in that direction suffered horribly for it. The enormous industrial capacity of communist countries, likewise, doesn't prove men like Mises wrong, least of all because it's only half true. Russia and China managed to keep up with the West by giving intensive care to their industrial sector, while the West increasingly treated it like a step child. Seeing as Russia imported much of its industrial equipment at various times, I would also say that price signals were still effective to a degree. When theory and practice conform to such a degree, it's generally silly to deride one or the other.
White also made a small comment on how the Nazis weren't socialists any more than the North Koreans are democratic. His arguments on that point are wrong. The Nazis weren't just trying to catch the working class with their anti-capitalist rhetoric, they were very sincere about it. At multiple occasions did Hitler and his underlings make remarks to the effect that capital and private property had to serve the community and not just a privileged few. Their policies reflected this, what with the increasing control of private property by the state and its commissioners, and the confiscation of companies and capital that wasn't used to their liking. As Hayek noted in his book The Road to Serfdom, many Nazi intellectuals and leaders also started out as orthodox Marxists. All in all, I think the "Socialist" part of the name is deserved.
Even with these little problems, I'm giving this book a five star rating. A good intellectual challenge is a healthy thing, and I think Atrocitology will be a very good challenge to anyone with a strong political opinion. He's not using blatant lies and sophistry, he draws all his conclusions from an honest interpretation of generally reliable historical data. Whether you find that he's wrong or not, you will most likely be better off for considering his perspective.
August 17, 2021
This book was given to me by a coworker to read right after I finished the Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn, but I needed a break from being exposed to the absolute horror that is mankind, so I read some more lightweight books before gritting my teeth and bearing down on this one.
This book is awful.
Humans are awful.
I will never understand how people can say that humanity is good. Anyone who says that humans are inherently good is willfully ignoring the evidence to the contrary. Humans are awful. We kill each other, slaughter each other, humiliate each other, grind each other to dust through hard labor, rape, and starvation, and for what? In the name of...nothing. Half of the atrocities in this book were perpetuated on the basis of mistakes. The other half on sheer disdain for other humans. It's sickening.
It was sickening to see that cannibalism is far more common than I thought it was. I was shocked when I saw pictures of bodies being sold for food in the Soviet Union during the famine of Ukraine. But then I read this book and saw that time after time in other markets it's been the same. I suppose that in the grips of a famine people will do anything that they can in order to survive, and I don't see anything particularly wrong with eating the body of someone who has already died. But, that's not what he was talking about. He talked about people actively butchering living, screaming people to eat them. It happened. Many times. The Aztecs slaughtered and ate millions of people. How worthless would other humans have to be in your eyes in order to do that?
I learned more than I ever wanted to know about recent history. I learned that I was shockingly ignorant about what has happened in the world, especially the third world. I didn't know how many genocides have happened in the middle east, southeast Asia or the continent of Africa. I knew about Cambodia, China, North Korea, and Russia, but had never heard of the Armenian Genocide, or the Rwandan Genocide, or the morass that is the Congo. I didn't know about what went down in the Vietnam war, or that the U.S. helped Iran gain its current power. I had heard such things but mostly dismissed them as political mongering. Well, now I know that I need to go read more about these events.
Probably the major thing that I walked away with from this book is that no one's hands are clean. Basically every nation currently extant has participated in or looked away from one or more mass killing event. I got into a discussion with someone a few months ago, before reading this book, and they equated the Crusades with Genghis Khan. ..... ...... I am not saying that the Crusades were good! They weren't! But comparing the deaths of 3 million people across two hundred years to 40 million dead in 27 years thanks to the deeds of one man?!?! They are incomparable! Or comparing the Crusades to the Cultural Revolution?!? Why don't we compare the Gladiatorial Games, or the multicides of Peter the Great, or the Korean war to the Cultural Revolution? Just as many people died in those three as died in the Crusades, that makes it a legitimate comparison, right? It seems like when people are playing the 'what about' game they are trying to defend some person that they like or put down someone they dislike. Don't they see that what they are doing is essentially just watered-down tribalism? Trying to make the guy you are defending sound better by pointing out that the other guy did the same thing or worse doesn't make sense when we are talking about the deaths of millions of people.
He ended the book with a quote that really made me want to shove my fist into the sky in agreement. He said "We all hate Hitler. It doesn't take courage to denounce Hitler. He's safely gone and completely discredited. It takes more courage to denounce someone who has mainstream admirers, like Ataturk, Arafat, Mao Zedong, or Robert E. Lee." He is completely correct here. It's fine to sit in our armchairs discussing the horrors of Hitler and King Leopold and Pol Pot. They are safely dead, and out of power. But what about the warlords of Pakistan? What about the Chinese government that is today running on the forced labor of political dissidents? What about North Korea where entire families are disappeared because one of their second-cousins-twice-removed made a joke about the 'Eternal Leader'? What about Venezuela? What about the religious cleansing of Christians in the Middle East and Africa? What about Myanmar?
What about the millions of children around the globe that aren't even allowed to draw their first breath?
Whenever human life is ripped away from innocents, it should be stood against, even if it's not politically popular.
This book is awful.
Humans are awful.
I will never understand how people can say that humanity is good. Anyone who says that humans are inherently good is willfully ignoring the evidence to the contrary. Humans are awful. We kill each other, slaughter each other, humiliate each other, grind each other to dust through hard labor, rape, and starvation, and for what? In the name of...nothing. Half of the atrocities in this book were perpetuated on the basis of mistakes. The other half on sheer disdain for other humans. It's sickening.
It was sickening to see that cannibalism is far more common than I thought it was. I was shocked when I saw pictures of bodies being sold for food in the Soviet Union during the famine of Ukraine. But then I read this book and saw that time after time in other markets it's been the same. I suppose that in the grips of a famine people will do anything that they can in order to survive, and I don't see anything particularly wrong with eating the body of someone who has already died. But, that's not what he was talking about. He talked about people actively butchering living, screaming people to eat them. It happened. Many times. The Aztecs slaughtered and ate millions of people. How worthless would other humans have to be in your eyes in order to do that?
I learned more than I ever wanted to know about recent history. I learned that I was shockingly ignorant about what has happened in the world, especially the third world. I didn't know how many genocides have happened in the middle east, southeast Asia or the continent of Africa. I knew about Cambodia, China, North Korea, and Russia, but had never heard of the Armenian Genocide, or the Rwandan Genocide, or the morass that is the Congo. I didn't know about what went down in the Vietnam war, or that the U.S. helped Iran gain its current power. I had heard such things but mostly dismissed them as political mongering. Well, now I know that I need to go read more about these events.
Probably the major thing that I walked away with from this book is that no one's hands are clean. Basically every nation currently extant has participated in or looked away from one or more mass killing event. I got into a discussion with someone a few months ago, before reading this book, and they equated the Crusades with Genghis Khan. ..... ...... I am not saying that the Crusades were good! They weren't! But comparing the deaths of 3 million people across two hundred years to 40 million dead in 27 years thanks to the deeds of one man?!?! They are incomparable! Or comparing the Crusades to the Cultural Revolution?!? Why don't we compare the Gladiatorial Games, or the multicides of Peter the Great, or the Korean war to the Cultural Revolution? Just as many people died in those three as died in the Crusades, that makes it a legitimate comparison, right? It seems like when people are playing the 'what about' game they are trying to defend some person that they like or put down someone they dislike. Don't they see that what they are doing is essentially just watered-down tribalism? Trying to make the guy you are defending sound better by pointing out that the other guy did the same thing or worse doesn't make sense when we are talking about the deaths of millions of people.
He ended the book with a quote that really made me want to shove my fist into the sky in agreement. He said "We all hate Hitler. It doesn't take courage to denounce Hitler. He's safely gone and completely discredited. It takes more courage to denounce someone who has mainstream admirers, like Ataturk, Arafat, Mao Zedong, or Robert E. Lee." He is completely correct here. It's fine to sit in our armchairs discussing the horrors of Hitler and King Leopold and Pol Pot. They are safely dead, and out of power. But what about the warlords of Pakistan? What about the Chinese government that is today running on the forced labor of political dissidents? What about North Korea where entire families are disappeared because one of their second-cousins-twice-removed made a joke about the 'Eternal Leader'? What about Venezuela? What about the religious cleansing of Christians in the Middle East and Africa? What about Myanmar?
What about the millions of children around the globe that aren't even allowed to draw their first breath?
Whenever human life is ripped away from innocents, it should be stood against, even if it's not politically popular.
December 16, 2014
This is quite possibly the most important history book I've ever read.
White has a particular perspective: that the human cost of human actions should be quantified and studied thoroughly. This book uses a systematic approach to provide an overview of human events which does not ignore any of the ugliness in history. His use of a simple definition and exquisite sourcing give the reader quite a bit to digest - from the Punic wars to the Congolese civil war to the Three Kingdoms to the Atlantic slave trade - presented in a chronological manner rather than by region.
As all historians do, he has some decisions to make: does the Holocaust stand alone or as part of World War II (the latter)? Do the British-caused famines make it in? (India yes, Ireland no). In all of the cases, he meticulously sources the range of estimates for body count and provides a rationale for his decisions (along with notes to check against), and he provides analysis of what these things have in common (less than you might have thought).
I think this should become a textbook: it is refreshingly free of ideology and is a wide-enough survey that it can provide the spine of a world history class. It's easy to read, and divided into digestible chunks.
This is excellent, highly recommended, and easily one of the better nonfiction books I've read in my life.
White has a particular perspective: that the human cost of human actions should be quantified and studied thoroughly. This book uses a systematic approach to provide an overview of human events which does not ignore any of the ugliness in history. His use of a simple definition and exquisite sourcing give the reader quite a bit to digest - from the Punic wars to the Congolese civil war to the Three Kingdoms to the Atlantic slave trade - presented in a chronological manner rather than by region.
As all historians do, he has some decisions to make: does the Holocaust stand alone or as part of World War II (the latter)? Do the British-caused famines make it in? (India yes, Ireland no). In all of the cases, he meticulously sources the range of estimates for body count and provides a rationale for his decisions (along with notes to check against), and he provides analysis of what these things have in common (less than you might have thought).
I think this should become a textbook: it is refreshingly free of ideology and is a wide-enough survey that it can provide the spine of a world history class. It's easy to read, and divided into digestible chunks.
This is excellent, highly recommended, and easily one of the better nonfiction books I've read in my life.
June 22, 2012
For people who appreciate military history and the great battles waged here on Planet Earth, this is probably going to entertain you, as it did me. The personalities, settings, and sheer number of those involved with these 100 atrocities make for some fantastic non-fiction reading. However, be warned that the author does not hold back in describing some intensely gruesome scenarios -- millions of wasted souls fly out of these pages. It got me down a bit, close to the end of the book, reading about these record-holding "multicides," as the author refers to them.
Most memorable chapter: Timur the Lame (Tamerlane) and his lofty piles of human skulls.
Most memorable chapter: Timur the Lame (Tamerlane) and his lofty piles of human skulls.
April 17, 2012
This is a surprisingly fascinating examination of the dark side of human history- the ways in which large numbers of humans die at the hands of other humans. We learn among other things that 3 million or more people died in the Roman gladiatorial games over some 700 years. Who knew? White may not be a Harvard professor, but he is clearly a bright man who has done a lot of research and thought deeply. It is well worth reading. This turns out to NOT be a freak show or a list of horrors- it is an honest effort to understand how and why human nature can veer into the dark areas of genocide, war, and forced starvation.
Currently reading
April 3, 2012So far so good...some best lines I read so far:
"While fighting over land is quite common, the land in dispute usually provides some practical resource - minerals, crops, harbors, farms, strategic location, exploitable labor, or sheer size. Palestine has none of these. The sole resource of the Holy Land is heritage. There's no gold, no oil, very little fertile land, and few natives, nothing but sacred sites, so in essence, the Crusades killed 3 million people in a fight to control the tourist trade." - p.106, Matthew White.
"While fighting over land is quite common, the land in dispute usually provides some practical resource - minerals, crops, harbors, farms, strategic location, exploitable labor, or sheer size. Palestine has none of these. The sole resource of the Holy Land is heritage. There's no gold, no oil, very little fertile land, and few natives, nothing but sacred sites, so in essence, the Crusades killed 3 million people in a fight to control the tourist trade." - p.106, Matthew White.
March 9, 2012
This guy writes with so little emotion about world events, it's hilarious. For example, he describes the Crusades as a fight to control the tourist trade. Also, it's comical how easily humanity resorts cannibalism. Loved it.
February 20, 2012
This was an amazing book. I learned so many things about history that I never learned in school. Basically anything having to do with African or Asian history was news to me. The writing was also quite witty for being about horrible atrocities.
April 21, 2012
I like lists, I like
History. This book combines
Them exhaustively.
History. This book combines
Them exhaustively.
August 18, 2021
To jump outside the chronological order of the book, to where I saw Matthew White really jump the shark?
Flat lies about British blockade in WWI “generally obeyed the laws of the sea,” as both blockade by extension and food as a blockade tool were illegal. As with other authors who lie about WWI, he loses one star right there. And yes, “lie” is the term. I don’t put up with this on World War I.
That put him in high three-star territory right there, as I’d already seen other problems with the book. And, with that, let’s go to horrific history in order.
White gets the background of the two Jewish revolts wrong. Not all Greeks and Jews hated each other. He doesn’t mention the willing desire of many Jews to Hellenize during both Ptolemaic and Seleucid control. This is a backstory of 1 and 2 Maccabees, as well as Josephus. He doesn’t at all mention the Zealot revolt over the Roman census of Judea. Also, Roman action against the various Judean revolts wasn’t anti-Semitic, contra his claims elsewhere.
Gets other matters of religion wrong, like claiming monotheism is the “best bet” in terms of cultural evolution. He says this in light of the BJP/RSS Hindu-nationalist fundamentalism, the 969 Buddhist fundies in Burma, and going back 50 years, Hindu and Buddhist fueled New Ageism spreading to the west. (I think if he had waited another 20 years to write this, he’d be able to put the BJP on his top 100.)
Related? He doesn’t seem to be an Xn fundagelical, so why he lists Old Testament/Tanakh stories of genocides as actual history is beyond me.
Speaking of? Some of his genocides are wrong. Mainly, I reject the idea that the mass deaths of American Indians in general was a genocide. One could make a case that with a few smaller individual tribes, there were genocides, but that’s not his angle. Nor was the Inuit elimination of the Norse a genocide.
Then we have simply stupid errors. Stalin did NOT go to a “Jesuit” seminary, he went to a Russian Orthodox one.
This by no means exhausts his religion-related errors. Considering WWII in any way a “religious war” because of the Holocaust is laughable and sickening both. Considering the gladiatorial games religious because some of them were associated in some ways with worship of some of the Roman pantheon is just laughable.
And, at this point, I willingly entered the realm of motivated reasoning to think about what else White got wrong. That’s as I realized this book was at best a three-star, because if he was making an unforced error like that, what other ones were there on East Asian history that I don’t know so well.
Then, there’s his “cut line.”
One thing popped to mind immediately. If the One Hundred Years War is a single event to him, what about the initial wave of post-Muhammad Muslim conquest? It was shorter, but surely killed enough to qualify for the top 100. Why wasn’t it here?
What about the Afrikaners wars against black Africans during the Great Trek? Did they kill enough to make the top 100?
Beyond the twentieth-century Bengal famine, and earlier Indian famines, did other actions besides these by the British Raj, considered as another event, rise to the level of the top 100, as in the Sepoy Rebellion and other stuff?
Staying with India, surely some event, defined as broadly as White does, from its history before Aurangzeb, would also qualify for the top 100. Ashoka comes immediately to mind. His Kalinga War alone killed an estimated 250,000. Given that his bottom line, at tie for 96th, is 300K, Ashoka arguably should have been there. Grandfather Chandragupta may have killed as many. If we combine them, per White’s own “era” framing, as “Maurya Empire,” they’re likely in the top 70. To top this all, White talks in one appendix about not finding much evidence in India. True about Chandragupta; not true of Ashoka; the Kalinga War is linked to his Wiki entry. Maybe, per White’s wrong statements about world religions, he just didn’t look that hard.
And, he lists neither Ashoka (Maurya Empire) nor the Muslim Conquest in his appendix of “disputed cases,” even. And, he flat-out rejects the Irish Potato Famine, making an unhistorical assertion that only he is going to say what famines make the cut for being included in his book, without denying that it more than meets the death requirements. (The famine probably killed 1 million.)
I QUOTE: “As far as I’m concerned, the only stand-lone, man-made famines worth discussing in this book are the famines of British India and the Iraq sanctions, but I’m setting my limit at two — no more.”
At that point, his last chance to hold on to three-star ranking vanished in the night.
Finally, although I think he’s possibly half-right on his thoughts on how ancient history numeric inaccuracy has been overstated, I don’t think he’s more than half-right. And, his using some modern inaccuracies in counting as part of his proof ignores that WE KNOW these were initial inaccuracies precisely because they were later revised.
In short, while the book isn’t pseudohistory, it comes off as personal semi-historical dilettantism, with a dusting of pedantism, as in rejecting the potato famine, as much as anything.
And because of all this, and despite White / his publisher talking on the back dust jacket about how often he’s been cited elsewhere, saying “his data have been cited by 377 published books and 183 scholarly articles,” I would use this book to recommend AGAINST other books, articles, etc. of his. He's lucky to hold on to a second star.
Flat lies about British blockade in WWI “generally obeyed the laws of the sea,” as both blockade by extension and food as a blockade tool were illegal. As with other authors who lie about WWI, he loses one star right there. And yes, “lie” is the term. I don’t put up with this on World War I.
That put him in high three-star territory right there, as I’d already seen other problems with the book. And, with that, let’s go to horrific history in order.
White gets the background of the two Jewish revolts wrong. Not all Greeks and Jews hated each other. He doesn’t mention the willing desire of many Jews to Hellenize during both Ptolemaic and Seleucid control. This is a backstory of 1 and 2 Maccabees, as well as Josephus. He doesn’t at all mention the Zealot revolt over the Roman census of Judea. Also, Roman action against the various Judean revolts wasn’t anti-Semitic, contra his claims elsewhere.
Gets other matters of religion wrong, like claiming monotheism is the “best bet” in terms of cultural evolution. He says this in light of the BJP/RSS Hindu-nationalist fundamentalism, the 969 Buddhist fundies in Burma, and going back 50 years, Hindu and Buddhist fueled New Ageism spreading to the west. (I think if he had waited another 20 years to write this, he’d be able to put the BJP on his top 100.)
Related? He doesn’t seem to be an Xn fundagelical, so why he lists Old Testament/Tanakh stories of genocides as actual history is beyond me.
Speaking of? Some of his genocides are wrong. Mainly, I reject the idea that the mass deaths of American Indians in general was a genocide. One could make a case that with a few smaller individual tribes, there were genocides, but that’s not his angle. Nor was the Inuit elimination of the Norse a genocide.
Then we have simply stupid errors. Stalin did NOT go to a “Jesuit” seminary, he went to a Russian Orthodox one.
This by no means exhausts his religion-related errors. Considering WWII in any way a “religious war” because of the Holocaust is laughable and sickening both. Considering the gladiatorial games religious because some of them were associated in some ways with worship of some of the Roman pantheon is just laughable.
And, at this point, I willingly entered the realm of motivated reasoning to think about what else White got wrong. That’s as I realized this book was at best a three-star, because if he was making an unforced error like that, what other ones were there on East Asian history that I don’t know so well.
Then, there’s his “cut line.”
One thing popped to mind immediately. If the One Hundred Years War is a single event to him, what about the initial wave of post-Muhammad Muslim conquest? It was shorter, but surely killed enough to qualify for the top 100. Why wasn’t it here?
What about the Afrikaners wars against black Africans during the Great Trek? Did they kill enough to make the top 100?
Beyond the twentieth-century Bengal famine, and earlier Indian famines, did other actions besides these by the British Raj, considered as another event, rise to the level of the top 100, as in the Sepoy Rebellion and other stuff?
Staying with India, surely some event, defined as broadly as White does, from its history before Aurangzeb, would also qualify for the top 100. Ashoka comes immediately to mind. His Kalinga War alone killed an estimated 250,000. Given that his bottom line, at tie for 96th, is 300K, Ashoka arguably should have been there. Grandfather Chandragupta may have killed as many. If we combine them, per White’s own “era” framing, as “Maurya Empire,” they’re likely in the top 70. To top this all, White talks in one appendix about not finding much evidence in India. True about Chandragupta; not true of Ashoka; the Kalinga War is linked to his Wiki entry. Maybe, per White’s wrong statements about world religions, he just didn’t look that hard.
And, he lists neither Ashoka (Maurya Empire) nor the Muslim Conquest in his appendix of “disputed cases,” even. And, he flat-out rejects the Irish Potato Famine, making an unhistorical assertion that only he is going to say what famines make the cut for being included in his book, without denying that it more than meets the death requirements. (The famine probably killed 1 million.)
I QUOTE: “As far as I’m concerned, the only stand-lone, man-made famines worth discussing in this book are the famines of British India and the Iraq sanctions, but I’m setting my limit at two — no more.”
At that point, his last chance to hold on to three-star ranking vanished in the night.
Finally, although I think he’s possibly half-right on his thoughts on how ancient history numeric inaccuracy has been overstated, I don’t think he’s more than half-right. And, his using some modern inaccuracies in counting as part of his proof ignores that WE KNOW these were initial inaccuracies precisely because they were later revised.
In short, while the book isn’t pseudohistory, it comes off as personal semi-historical dilettantism, with a dusting of pedantism, as in rejecting the potato famine, as much as anything.
And because of all this, and despite White / his publisher talking on the back dust jacket about how often he’s been cited elsewhere, saying “his data have been cited by 377 published books and 183 scholarly articles,” I would use this book to recommend AGAINST other books, articles, etc. of his. He's lucky to hold on to a second star.
October 26, 2019
It is a review (ranked) of the atrocities of history. Megadeaths caused by humanity to other parts of humanity. As you can tell by the amount of time I took to read the book, it's better dipped into than read straight through. He goes into detail on his methodology as well, both in determining how to delineate horrible things, and how he attempts to come up with death numbers. All in all, interesting -- if not exactly the thing you want to read when you despair at humanity.
March 2, 2020
Well researched and written. Wasn't very apparent in the title, I must admit. Enough details in the snippets to satisfy a history buff, but not too much to overwhelm a casual reader. You get a satisfying overview of world history, albeit only of atrocities. Occasionally, you get a trite comment, but I can let that pass in view of the overall satisfaction from the book. Highly recommended for those who can spare the time and effort for this rather long book.
November 11, 2022
Not at all the boring encyclopedic list I anticipated. It was rather an entertaining take on the 100 most terrible atrocities in human history.
As you complete this tome, you also get a rough idea of world history as it is written in a chronological order.
Highly recommended.
As you complete this tome, you also get a rough idea of world history as it is written in a chronological order.
Highly recommended.
May 8, 2020
This was actually more interesting than i thought it would be, but what a cruel cruel world we livein! Took me a while to read but glad i did!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 162 reviews