Benjamin Lieberman, Remaking Identities: God, Nation and Race in World History (Rowman and Littlefield, 2013)
What do you say to someone who suggests that genocide is not just destructive, but constructive?\n\nThis is the basic theme of Benjamin Lieberman\u2018s excellent new book\xa0Remaking Identities: \xa0God, Nation and Race in World History\xa0(Rowman and Littlefield, 2013).\xa0The book surveys two thousand years of history to explain how people have used violence to reconstruct identities. \xa0This obviously involves death and destruction. \xa0But it also involves recasting the identities of survivors. \xa0It involves evangelism and religious conversion. \xa0It entails education and persuasion. \xa0It sometimes requires forced separation from one\u2019s community and integration into a new community and a new way of viewing the world. \xa0In doing so, Lieberman reminds us, many perpetrators intended to create a new world, not just destroy an old one. \xa0It\u2019s an important insight, one Lieberman explores through a variety of case studies ranging from the Islamic expansion of the 700s to the violence of the 20th century.\n\nLieberman was not content, however, to write just one book. \xa0At almost the same time, he published a textbook titled The Holocaust and Genocides in Europe\xa0(Bloomsbury Press, 2013).\xa0The book is a study in brevity and in the choices facing the author in compressing such a large topic into a couple of hundred pages. \xa0The result is an excellent text, well worth reading, whether as a college student or as an interested reader.\n\nWe managed to talk about both books in one regular-length interview. I trust you\u2019ll enjoy the result.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies