The Burning Tigris : The Armenian Genocide and America's Response

A History of International Human Rights and Forgotten Heroes In this national bestseller, the critically acclaimed author Peter Balakian brings us a riveting narrative of the massacres of the Armenians in the 1890s and of the Armenian Genocide in 1915 at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. Using rarely seen archival documents and remarkable first-person accounts, Balakian presents the chilling history of how the Turkish government implemented the first modern genocide behind the cover of World War I. And in the telling, he resurrects an extraordinary lost chapter of American history. Awarded the Raphael Lemkin Prize for the best scholarly book on genocide by the Institute for Genocide Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice/CUNY Graduate Center. In this groundbreaking history of the Armenian Genocide, the critically acclaimed author of the memoir Black Dog of Fate brings us a riveting narrative of the massacres of the Armenians in the 1890s and genocide in 1915 at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. Using rarely seen archival documents and remarkable first-person accounts, Peter Balakian presents the chilling history of how the Young Turk government implemented the first modern genocide behind the cover of World War I. And in the telling, he also resurrects an extraordinary lost chapter of American history. During the United States' ascension in the global arena at the turn of the twentieth century, America's humanitarian movement for Armenia was an important part of the rising nation's first epoch of internationalism. Intellectuals, politicians, diplomats, religious leaders, and ordinary citizens came together to try to save the Armenians. The Burning Tigris reconstructs this landmark American cause that was spearheaded by the passionate commitments and commentaries of a remarkable cast of public figures, including Julia Ward Howe, Clara Barton, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Alice Stone Blackwell, Stephen Crane, and Ezra Pound, as well as courageous missionaries, diplomats, and relief workers who recorded their eyewitness accounts and often risked their lives in the killing fields of Armenia. The crisis of the "starving Armenians" was so embedded in American popular culture that, in an age when a loaf of bread cost a nickel, the American people sent more than $100 million in aid through the American Committee on Armenian Atrocities and its successor, Near East Relief

the Armenian Genocide By The Turks Was The First Great Genocide Of The 20th Century. Balakian (humanities, Colgate U.) Explores The American Response To The Crime Through The Actions Of Diplomats And Politicians, As Well As Protestant Missionaries, The Press, And The American Relief Community. State Department Officials, Particularly Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Are Portrayed As Going To Almost Heroic Lengths In Efforts To Avert The Massacres. The Passion Of The Relief Agencies Are Also Described Favorably, While Isolationist Republican Senators And Post-world War I Power Alliances And Oil Considerations Are Suggested To Have Diverted Attempts To Address The Genocide. These Tensions, Contends Balakian, Continue To Haunt American Foreign Policy Down To The Present Time. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, Or

the New York Times

… the Burning Tigris Does Succeed In Resurrecting A Little-known Chapter Of American As Well As Armenian History. It Also Underscores A Crucial Point About Humanitarian Responses To Violations Of Human Rights: Outrage And Outpourings Of Sympathy And Aid May Save Some Lives, But -- As The 20th Century Would Show Time And Again -- They Have Little Real Impact In The Face Of State Interests That Militate Against Intervention. With the Burning Tigris Peter Balakian Forcefully Reminds Us That Almost A Century After The Armenian Genocide, The International Community Has Yet To Find A Means Of Implementing Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Vision, As Pertinent Today As It Was In 1903: ''national Crimes Demand International Law, To Restrain, Prohibit, Punish, Best Of All, Prevent.'' — belinda Cooper

A New York Times bestseller, The Burning Tigris is “a vivid and comprehensive account” (Los Angeles Times) of the Armenian Genocide and America's response.Award-winning, critically acclaimed author Peter Balakian presents a riveting narrative of the massacres of the Armenians in the 1890s and of the Armenian Genocide in 1915 at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. Using rarely seen archival documents and remarkable first-person accounts, Balakian presents the chilling history of how the Turkish government implemented the first modern genocide behind the cover of World War I. And in the telling, he resurrects an extraordinary lost chapter of American history.Awarded the Raphael Lemkin Prize for the best scholarly book on genocide by the Institute for Genocide Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice/CUNY Graduate Center.“Timely and welcome... an overwhelmingly convincing retort to genocide deniers.” —New York Times Book Review“A story of multiplying horror and betrayal.... What happened to the Armenians in Turkey was a harbinger of the Holocaust and of the waves of modern mass murder that have swept the world ever since.” —Boston Globe“Encourages America to tap into a forgotten well of knowledge about the genocide and to revive its powerful impulse toward humanitarianism.” —New York Newsday "During the United States' ascension in the global arena at the turn of the twentieth century, America's humanitarian movement for Armenia was an important part of the rising nation's first epoch of internationalism. Intellectuals, politicians, diplomats, religious leaders, and ordinary citizens came together to try to save the Armenians. The Burning Tigris reconstructs this landmark American cause that was spearheaded by the passionate commitments and commentaries of a remarkable case of public figures, including Julia Ward Howe, Clara Barton, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Alice Stone Blackwell, Stephen Crane, and Ezra Pound, as well as courageous missionaries, diplomats, and relief workers who recorded their eyewitness accounts and often risked their lives in the killing fields of Armenia."--Jacket The light in New England in late fall is austere and clean and rinses the white steeples of Boston's Congregational and Unitarian churches, the red brick of the State House, and the gray stone of the Back Bay town houses.