A review by annabanana96
Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century by Jonathan Glover

3.0

The book covers humanitarian catastrophes and atrocities of the 20th century as Hiroshima, the 3rd Reich, Stalin's Soviet Union, Rwanda, Mao's reforms, Cambodia and Tito's Yugoslavia with lots of small individual stories. It shows the lack of humanity in these times and the brutality with which people were treated and analyses the reasons. Contrasting to these dark times it tells of Kennedy and Krushev who circumnavigated a third world war by being humane and other instances of humanity. It's a good summary of the 20th century, but I've read books being more analytical and going more into the depths of human psychology (The better angels of our nature by Pinker and The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness by Fromm). I also found Glover's "solution" and safeguards against humanitarian catastrophes a bit naive and without much thought as to how to effectively implement them (world police, ensuring civil employees don't carry out inhumane actions etc.).