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desertjarhead505's review against another edition
5.0
A magnificent work, one I recommend strongly, and one I will never read again. I have to echo some of the words of the reviewers quoted on the cover: Harrowing. Shattering. Horror. I would add, both absorbing and heartbreaking. I kept remembering a quote from Bertrand Russell: “The mark of a civilized human being is the capacity to read a column of numbers and weep.”
Snyder moves back and forth between the analytical and the personal, and does something I've seldom seen. He both makes the bloodcurdling tragedy real at a humble personal level and shows the big picture.
The last section, the conclusion, is the best, I think. He subtitled it "Humanity." Snyder again goes over the numbers; he compares and contrasts the Nazi and Stalinist systems in action; he sorts the differential impacts by the categories the killers divided people into. Then he examines the ways that people distance themselves from death and suffering, whether they're the perpetrators or are looking at it from a distance as students of history, and calls that distancing out as a kind of second killing, an erasing of each of the dead as a person with his or her own life, personality, thoughts and feelings. He tears down that abstraction effectively by repeating that the 5.7 million Jews killed in the Holocaust were actually 5.7 million times one - each a unique person. The 3.1 million Soviet POWs murdered by the Nazis were 3.1 million times one. The 3.3 million Ukrainians starved to death on Stalin's orders were 3.3 million times one.
I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes after finishing reading this. I can only imagine how many time Timothy Snyder wept while he wrote it. This must have been a terribly hard book to create. I've watched interviews of Timothy Snyder and been struck by how somber his resting demeanor is - as he has made the study of this part of history his specialty, it's easy to see why.
Every person who simplistically dismisses whole categories of other people as homogenous masses and objectifies them should have to read this book and talk it over with others, because that kind of distancing and objectification is the first step necessary for the infliction of mass evil.
Snyder moves back and forth between the analytical and the personal, and does something I've seldom seen. He both makes the bloodcurdling tragedy real at a humble personal level and shows the big picture.
The last section, the conclusion, is the best, I think. He subtitled it "Humanity." Snyder again goes over the numbers; he compares and contrasts the Nazi and Stalinist systems in action; he sorts the differential impacts by the categories the killers divided people into. Then he examines the ways that people distance themselves from death and suffering, whether they're the perpetrators or are looking at it from a distance as students of history, and calls that distancing out as a kind of second killing, an erasing of each of the dead as a person with his or her own life, personality, thoughts and feelings. He tears down that abstraction effectively by repeating that the 5.7 million Jews killed in the Holocaust were actually 5.7 million times one - each a unique person. The 3.1 million Soviet POWs murdered by the Nazis were 3.1 million times one. The 3.3 million Ukrainians starved to death on Stalin's orders were 3.3 million times one.
I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes after finishing reading this. I can only imagine how many time Timothy Snyder wept while he wrote it. This must have been a terribly hard book to create. I've watched interviews of Timothy Snyder and been struck by how somber his resting demeanor is - as he has made the study of this part of history his specialty, it's easy to see why.
Every person who simplistically dismisses whole categories of other people as homogenous masses and objectifies them should have to read this book and talk it over with others, because that kind of distancing and objectification is the first step necessary for the infliction of mass evil.
timallenrip's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
medium-paced
4.75
linnea1m's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.25
kikiandarrowsfishshelf's review against another edition
5.0
Is it just me or does it seem very strange that the Germans in WW II had an Operation Easter Bunny, which dealt with killing? My mind is blown and a more corherent review might come later.
This books is one of the those books that you like but don't like reading. It is about the area of Poland and other later parts of Eastern Europe during WW II and afterwards. Snyder focuses on Poland and the Urakine for the most part. He examines the high rate of death and the reasons behind it, how Stalin and Hitler fed off of each other in a way as well as the differences in the USSR and Nazi killing machines.
As to why you should read this and seek understanding, it is perhaps best said by Snyder himself in the close of his book, "To yield to this temptation, to find other people to be inhuman, is to take a step toward, not away from, the Nazi position. To find other people incomprehensible is to abandon the search for understanding, and thus to abandon history".
This books is one of the those books that you like but don't like reading. It is about the area of Poland and other later parts of Eastern Europe during WW II and afterwards. Snyder focuses on Poland and the Urakine for the most part. He examines the high rate of death and the reasons behind it, how Stalin and Hitler fed off of each other in a way as well as the differences in the USSR and Nazi killing machines.
As to why you should read this and seek understanding, it is perhaps best said by Snyder himself in the close of his book, "To yield to this temptation, to find other people to be inhuman, is to take a step toward, not away from, the Nazi position. To find other people incomprehensible is to abandon the search for understanding, and thus to abandon history".
druid2112's review against another edition
4.0
This was perhaps the worst good book I've ever read. I mean, if you've come this far, you understand what you must expect. The numbers are appalling, and the author takes pains to describe all of the permutations of all of the statistics in exhausting detail. If you persevere (and this book does take effort), you will likely learn something, perhaps a great deal. About what, exactly, is harder to name.
trgeyer's review against another edition
3.0
Never has a book made me so despondent and disheartened with human behavior. While the subject matter does not lend itself to many (if any) upbeat moments, Snyder does not to find them. The introduction spells out what is ahead, and the reader gets what is promised - a detailing of the systematic extermination of Jews and Central Europeans. Despite knowing about WWII and the Holocaust, I failed to recognize the magnitude of the atrocities that took place in the land between Germany and Russia during that time period. Snyder sets out to detail how truly awful this time in history was and he succeeds. However, I wish there were more pages devoted to the sentiments of the people and what was being done to end the misery. An important read, but it was written in a cold and academic style that left me completely numb.