“A Problem from Hell”

In the waning days of 2019 I was feeling ambitious, I suppose, and a little brave, so I decided to finally crack open Samantha Power's hefty Pulitzer-winning "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide. In it, she chronicles a century's worth of failures to stop genocide, even after repeated vows of "never again" from elected officials.

Some of the countries I love the most have suffered genocide (or something close to it) in the twentieth century, so grappling with the complexities of these unimaginable horrors is, in some way, I suppose, an act of love. Maybe even an act of hope.