Collaboratively compiled and edited by Samuel Totten (Professor of Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education and Health Professions, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville) and Steven Leonard Jacobs (Associate Professor and Aaron Aronov Chair of Judaic Studies, Department of Religious Studies, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa), Pioneers Of Genocide Studies is a scholarly, 617-page compendium of learned essays contributed by a variety of informed and informative authors concerning the phenomena of twentieth-century mass murder -- especially as inspired, sanctioned, or perpetrated by governmental states. Addressing the pervasive prevalence of brutal extermination from the perspectives of psychology, sociology, theology, and law, Pioneers Of Genocide Studies also attempts to answer the question of what must be done if genocide is ever to end. Pioneers Of Genocide Studies is a seminal and highly recommended contribution to academic reference collections in the fields of 20th Century World History, Social Science, Cultural Studies, Holocaust Studies, Judaic Studies, and Political Science.

In this reviewer's opinion, Lifton's book is the definitive work on the subject of Nazi doctors; in this book, he has pulled together more details and information about his subjects on a scale that has yet to be surpassed. From the origins of the Nazi "bio-medical vision" (his term) to "euthanasia," to the full-blown scale of the Final Solution, a clear-cut transition into mass murder and genocide is presented in light of a tremendous number of lives and times of Nazi perpetrators, whose betrayal of the Hippocratic Oath is shocking.

Lifton's original research is in itself a work of tremendous value; he personally interviewed many former Nazi doctors, survivors that bore direct witness to their crimes, as well as the Jewish and non-Jewish doctors that became collaborators with their Nazi superiors. So many accounts of their lives and deeds abound within the pages of this book...their experiences speak for themselves to add to the growing portrait of the medical profession in light of Nazism.

In this reviewer's opinion, Part III, which deals with the doctors in Auschwitz, is the most integral part of the book, with Chapter 16 being one of the most prominent chapters, as its subject, Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous doctor that never ended up living and being caught for his insurmountable cruelty, is given a human face that cuts through all the years of myth, legend, and hype surrounding his career and medical experiments.

There is one weak part of the book, evident in its sub-heading: "Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide." While it is incumbent that readers will judge for themselves the validity and integrity of psychoanalysis in history, this reviewer finds this an appropriate element suitable for another book. Psychoanalysis and history, in essence, should not be combined, as they themselves are two totally different areas not meant to be combined with the risk of considerable distortion and misunderstanding. Part IV of this book can be coined the Psycho-historical aspect of this work, as Freudian methods abound.

Its psychoanalytical bearing notwithstanding, this book is absolutely riveting, tremendously exhaustive and interesting, and original. It is crucial to the understanding of the Nazi doctors that were trained (and sworn) to be healers, and who became killers and traitors of the most basic of human moral codes. Absolutely crucial to any understanding of Holocaust perpetrators and the driving force behind the genocide.

Mr. Lifton is amazingly fair in trying to view the action of the Nazi doctors from their point of view. I was very impressed with his fairness. This is one of the first books on the holocaust that I read and it made my mind hungry for more information. It answered alot of my first questions about the holocaust in the first of the book. How they came to have such power to kill based only upon race. Then he goes on to speak of the doctors personaly; giving some background information on them and what "function" they performed in the consentration camps, along with some stories about them. It was a great read and now I am less ignorant of what happened during the holocaust.

This book explores the question of how doctors, who are sworn to do no harm, became the integral organizers and managers of the Nazi death camps. Through exhaustive interviews with these doctors, people who knew them, and camp survivors, Lifton arrives at more than just individual psychological profiles of these professional killers. He presents us rather with a dense, psychosocial exploration of the dynamics of state-organized terror, along with enough history to describe the milieu in which these dynamics evolved. (Many people will be surprised to discover that the eugenics movement, which fueled the Nazi terror, had a large following in the United States during the 1930's.) The book reads like a novel in parts (especially the chapter on Josef Megele). However, I found the introduction one of the most interesting sections; in it Lifton describes the process he went through to gather and analyze his data. This included interviewing ex-Nazi doctors, who suspected or knew outright that Lifton himself is Jewish. Lifton's descriptions of the little verbal dances he and these doctors did around the German/Jewish conflict are fascinating.....For obvious reasons this book is not an "easy read," despite the quality of the writing. It will literally give you bad dreams. However, those dreams will spring from the collective human experience which we all share. For that reason this book is important to read.

I was a bit disappointed in this book because the dust jacket states the authors attempted to write a unbiased book covering the people that are part of the capital punishment process in America. Maybe it is that the authors stance on the death penalty is so strong that it is all they could do to be as objective as they were, but I was still looking for an unbiased account. With that said I did learn a lot from the book, I also agree with the author's position on the death penalty so their position was not that hard to take. I just wanted more of the other side represented so that I could learn more about that point of view.

The most eye opening part of the book is just the raw data on how many people are currently on death row and how many people have been taken off death row after being proven innocent. The authors also take the reader through all the people associated with the death penalty for interviews. From Judges and juries to the prison guards and executioners, all get a say in the book. What was interesting is that the authors did not present any really gun ho, hang them high types, all the people seamed down to earth and a little uneasy about the whole process. I think there is such a primitive law and order feeling associated with the states power to end a life that I do not think the authors are correct that the death penalty is coming to an end in America - it just appeals to too much of the population.

Overall this is an interesting and eye-opening book. If you are interested in the personal side of the death penalty then this is a good place to start. It did slow down at the end and again I would have liked a little more unbiased writing if only to hold the book out as an example of an unbiased report pushing for the end to the death penalty.

I found this book a good read and would recommend it.

One major objective of this book is to show capitol punishment from all angles. They talk about he prosecutors, the jurors, the judge, the executioners, the governors, and all other cogs in the system. By the time they are done, they make a convincing argument that this process is so fractionalized that nobody feels ultimate responsibility for this grave action (which helps keep it alive).

It also explores people's "support" for capitol punishment. You come to realize that the *objective* of a lot of supporters is keeping the criminal off the street, not vengeance. Thus, when given the option of life without parole, the support for capitol punishment drops below 50%.

I feel that there was a lot of "On one hand... then on the other hand... but you have to remember... and it is important not to discount...".

Although they referenced many polls and facts, I would have preferred this to be a little more 'scientific' and less philosophical. Also in their effort to explor all sides of this issue, many of their statements are pretty obvious -- for example, victim families what vengence and 'closure'. Duh.

I found the style to be a little odd. One of the writers is a journalist and the book is written accordingly. One one hand, they try to be even-handed showing all sides, while on the other, they write with the base assumption that capitol punishment is wrong. I did not find this confusing, but it was a little odd.

I don't wish these comments to discourage people -- it is a worthwhile read, but it does have a few shortcommings.

I read this book for a class and I really liked the book! I thought it was one of the best books that I've read on the issue of capital punishment.

As I said before, this book is very misunderstood. People likes to use it to support their own ideas about "brainwashing" and "mind control", and sometimes they forget and old-age word that describes well the same thing without any "mind control theory": fanaticism. But there is no fanaticism without fanatics who want to believe, just believe and nothing more. People who need a simplistic vision of the world, some attention and love and will do anything for that. They just want to be guided, no matter whether by Hitler or Jesus.

There are people who join the cults and leave spontaneously a few years later. It's a fact. It's just a step in their spiritual journey. But there are also some of them who prefer to say that the years spent in the cult were the result of very effective "brainwashing"/"mind control" techniques, which turned them into some kind of religious zombie. They say they were not responsible for what they did, for what they believed, and that all the guilt should go to the cult leader. But, if this were true, how could all the others leave the cult without deep traumas, deprogramming etc.? If the author, Robert Jay Lifton himself, did recognize that physical coercion was a key-point to his totalist model and that no one of his samples did not really adhere to the Communists ideas (i.e., the Chinese program was a failure), what else is to be said? And even if Lifton had discovered that brainwashing exists (and he did not), why 99% of the other scientists who investigated the issue have not detected it in the cult dynamics? What "mind control science" is this that is essentially based on just one book with an inconclusive research and some few late sensationalists "researchers" (e.g. Singer, Hassan) whose methods and theories are not recognized by the scientific community? Is this science or a modern myth with a pseudo-scientific support?

If you like Psychology and is interested in the cult issue, read this book. It's an important work. But read it entirely, whithout pre-judgements, and compare with other scientific works about "mind control". It is worth the effort.

Lifton provides content and commentary regarding attempts by the People's Republic of China to 're-educate' Westerners and citizens according to Communist ideology. Actual contents of his one-on-one interviews are particularly useful, as are Lifton's evaluations of the effects and causes of 're-education'.

Lifton's principal shortcoming is the overarching psychotherapeutic interpretations, which sometimes stretch the imagination.

Lifton's book is often misunderstood and misrepresented as a polemic against 'brainwashing' and religious 'cultism'. 'Brainwashing' usually means the hypnotic manipulation of one's thoughts forcing someone to change their beliefs counter to their awareness or conscious will; Lifton denies emphatically that this happened in China or that it can happen. It appears that many who cite his work (and some of the reviewers here) have never read the book, other than through excerpts and summaries.

Lifton himself admits that 'brainwashing' is a misnomer; he denies that 're-education' was effective or that it converted people against their will. Furthermore, he argues that the principal difference between Chinese methods of thought-reform and normal, usual persuasion is the Chinese use of physical violence and imprisonment.

Lifton never intended for his book to be used by the anti-cult industry to attack religious non-orthodoxy and constitutionally guaranteed religious expression.

This book has created a lot of controversies envolving new religious movements. Although it describes a research made with POWs e somes Chinese intellectuals, it has been frequently used attacks against some new religious movements.

The concept "brainwashing" first came into public use during the Korean War in the 1950s as an explanation for why a few American GIs defected to the Communists. The two most authoritative studies of the Korean War defections (and this book was one of them) concluded that "brainwashing" was an inappropriate concept to account for this renunciation of U.S. citizenship. When several new religious came into high profile during the youth counter-culture of the 1960s and 70s the concept "brainwashing" was again employed as a culturally acceptable explanation to account for the fact that some idealistic "flower children" came under the influence of "cult" leaders. A quarter-of-a-century of scholarly research on why people join new religions has come to essentially the same conclusion as the Korean War studies -- "brainwashing" is not a viable concept to describe the dynamics of affiliation with new religions. Defenders of "brainwashing" have used other concepts like "mind control" and "thought reform," but they have failed to produce a scholarly literature to support their claims. Thus, whatever euphemisms may be employed, the basic conclusion against the brainwashing thesis is not altered. Still, the mass media continues to report claims of "brainwashing" as if the alleged phenomenon were real. And, as a result, the concept "brainwashing" sustains considerable currency in popular culture. It is, to be sure, a powerful metaphor. "Brainwashing" communicates disapproval of influence by persons, or groups, the user of the term considers to be illegitimate. If you want to understand the origins of the concept, read Lifton's work. Just take care to not get caught by the "cult mind control" rhetoric.

Many would-be earlier critics here have tried to make it seem like Dr. Singer is somehow intolerant of "alternative religions;" a politically correct (PC) term used by the members of many cults, questionable organizations and various liberal ideologists. Trust me, any professor who is truly intolerant doesn't have the vast positive regard of her peers that Dr. Singer has, and she wouldn't last long on a campus nowadays. Her research methodologies and subsequent writings conformed to the best tradition of the empirical and scientific psychology. Dr. Singer made it amply clear (to anyone who has half a brain and no hidden agendas) that she acknowledged the difference between new age groups versus cults and similar, and she made it amply clear that her book is absolutely no criticism of the new age movement.

However to paraphrase Hitler, if you yell a lie loudly and long enough eventually people will come to see it as the truth. Hence it's a common tactic of cults and similar--and the politically correct that are infesting our schools and universities--to give cult experts such as Dr. Singer, Mr. Rick Ross (or anyone else who dares actually say what they truly think/feel nowadays) those negative PC labels. Seemingly this is the era of the "chronically offended" ideologists who simply legally forces their minority extreme views onto the moderate majority; but isn't a democracy about the MAJORITY? Free speech seems to be more correlated to how much money one can afford to pay lawyers than to the truth. Case in point: If you were hoping to find the same large group awareness group (LGAT) information that was in the hard cover edition of this book you'll be very disappointed. The retired Dr. Singer simply could not afford the litigation costs to maintain her true and complete opinions on LGAT's publicly, and as a retired professor she no longer has the financial resources of her former university. In a land of free speech, it's appalling how chronically offended ideologists, cult apologists and forum freaks can literally suppress research, research data and the open exchange of ideas to the general public simply because its offends such groups' highly subjective non scientific views. Just because something "sounds true," "feels good," or was said by Gary Zukov on Oprah or by the seminar/forum leader doesn't mean that it is always true! Your mind is a terrible thing to waste. Read this book, or better yet the hard cover edition; and the mind you save may be your own.

The outline of the book is straightforward: Part one identifies what a cult is. Ms. Singer takes care to emphasize that the term "cult" is a netural one.

Part two details the methods used by these cults. And it is in this area that the distinction between legitimate groups are distinguished from manipulative groups whose ultimate goal is to serve the will of the cult leader without criticism, rather than a beneficial goal beyond the personal service of the cult leadership.

A true self-help group, like Alcoholics Anonymous or a local church, will allow for the possibility that the convert might leave, and will not view it as a threat to the organization. As detailed by the anecdotal evidence in the book, the lengths to which the (malignant) cult leadership will stifle internal dissent and outside criticism, demonstrates the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of these cults and their inherent distrust of an individual's self-determination. This, I can tell you, is *not* what goes on in your normal neighborhood church.

The final part is instructive as it is heartbreaking, as it emphasizes the loss of children's life, and on how to get people out of the cult. As Singer's anecdotal stories about ex-cult members compound upon the reader, the proper reaction to these types of groups should be growing contempt, as many of the members seem unable to formulate any mental or spiritual foundation after having been manipulated so perversely.

Dr. Singer has written a very valuable resource for all readers who are interested in cults, who have a loved one in a cult, or who, like myself -- ended up being greatly deceived by a cult. Dr. Singer was supportive and helpful to me when I finally extracted myself from the cult I had been a member of for six years. She took the time to speak to me numerous times on the telephone and through various e-mails. Her book is a tremendous resource for anyone interested in this subject. It is literally one of the best published and I've researched religious cults for over a decade now. For a comprehensive look at mind altering organizations, this is a book no one should pass up.

If you are really interested in what happened between Turks and Armenians in 1915,i can suggest you to read Heath Lowry's The Story Behind Ambassador Morgenthau's Story.Professor Heath Lowry is a well-known historian in Princeton University and in his book,he proves Ambassador Morgenthau's Story wrong scientifically,shows how the book is based on rumors.A must to read for those who are interested in this matter...

The book is advisable only when one reads it with Heath W. Lowry' s "The Story Behind Ambassador Morgenthau' s Story", published by ISIS Press, Istanbul in 1990. As Dr. Lowry describes:

"The answer is simple and relates to the fact that Morgenthau was writing a piece of wartime propaganda with the expressly stated purpose of mobilising support for President Wilson's war effort. He consciously down played the close relationships he enjoyed with the Young Turk leadership throughout his sojourn in Constantinople and sacrificed truth for the greater good of helping to generate anti-Turkish sentiment which would transform itself into pro-war sentiment."

Unfortunately the American public opinion during that time was based on such sources as the services of Dragaman (translators) between the officials of the Ottoman Empire and the American Ambassador. And these dragaman were not Ottoman Turks but Ottoman Armenians and Ottoman Greeks both were in conflict with the Ottoman Empire. Ambassador Morgenthau used two of them, two Armenians, namely Hagop S. Andonian (personal secretary) and Arshag K. Schmavonian (legal assistant). The printed copy however went through severe war time propaganda editing by the US Secretary of State, Robert Lensing and Pulitzer award winning author, Burton J. Hendrick.

One of the most dramatic incidents and the diversion of the facts were about the life insurance benefits of the deceased Armenian insurers of an American Insurance company. The book claims that Talaat, the Ottoman Interior Minister, made a request to him that the Ambassador should help to facilitate payment the insurance benefits to the Ottoman Treasury, as there were no heirs to the insurers! However, Dr. Lowry proved that after reading the actual dated letters, the request of the Ottoman Minister was to stop the American Insurance Company from transferring their capital funds from Ottoman Empire to France, and thereby preserving sufficient capitalization for any benefits claims. Such diversion of the facts is extremely dangerous.

It is therefore an important document about the wartime journalism and subsequent unfortunate diversions of the facts to base Armenian claims of 1915. We could only be grateful to Dr. Lowry that he shed light into the story with his review of the original letters stored in FDR Library and in the National Achieves.

Ambassador Morgenthau has always been one of the most reliable sources on the Armenian Genocide. No surprise that so many attempts have been made to tarnish his image, or to question his testimonies on the terrible crime committed by the Ottoman Empire against its Christian Armenian subjects. Yet, the Morgenthau version of the 1915 events is abslutely irrefutable, and I strongly recommend this book to those interested in finding out what has really happened during the agony of the "ill man of Europe".