Extraordinary Evil: A Short Walk to Genocide [Hardcover]

Barbara Coloroso (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 24, 2007

From best-selling author Barbara Coloroso comes a timely and essential book about genocide. Through an examination of three clearly defined genocides — the Armenian and Rwandan genocides, and the European Holocaust — Coloroso deconstructs the causes and consequences, both to its immediate victims and to the fabric of the world at large, and proposes the conditions that must exist in order to eradicate this evil from the world. Coloroso is well known for her best-selling books that explore why children bully. In Extraordinary Evil she builds upon that research to explain why the impulse to bully is mirrored by the act of genocide. By linking the psychology of the bully to the motivation that leads a community to murder, Coloroso provides devastating and vital insight into why people kill their neighbors. Based on the author's 15 years of research and extensive travel, Extraordinary Evil is an urgently needed work in an age when acts of genocide seem to occur more frequently and are in the public's consciousness more than ever before.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Placing genocidal campaigns at the extreme on a spectrum of bullying that begins in socialization's earliest stages, Coloroso (The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander) seeks to strengthen the legal and moral prevention of genocide and to improve humanitarian intervention. Analyzing the plight of the Armenians; the Jews, Roma and Sinti; and Rwandan Tutsis, she marshals solid studies, victim and perpetrator testimonies, as well as her own expertise as a nationally recognized speaker on conflict resolution. Her discussion of problems of definition, political will, and social and psychological persuasion are useful, but her argument can be tedious, despite graphic and distressing detail. Drawing heavily and only semiconvincingly on her earlier child-centered work, Coloroso has a tendency to rely on Power Point–style lists, brusquely contextualized quotations and even a cartoon-illustrated flowchart of bullies and their enablers. Her generalizations can be disturbing—for example, when she suggests Rwanda's colonial past plays no role in the current violence, despite contrary arguments from Mahmood Mamdani and others not cited here. Coloroso's checklist of genocidal prerequisites can also blur into other acts of state-sponsored or condoned aggression and exploitation. This book provides entry into a vital dialogue, but should be considered at best a beginning. (Sept.)
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Review

"Barbara Coloroso has spent her entire life fighting for social justice and equality. Her work is an astonishing encyclopedia of causes: from the bullying of children to the genocide in Rwanda. Nothing escapes the unsparing force of her intellect, the gentle generosity of her soul, and her passion to shape a better world."

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Nation Books (August 24, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568583710
• ISBN-13: 978-1568583716
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #751,801 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Barbara Coloroso is an international bestselling author and for the past 38 years an internationally recognized speaker and consultant on parenting, teaching, school discipline, positive school climate, bullying, grieving, nonviolent conflict resolution and restorative justice. She has appeared on Oprah, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN and NPR and has been featured in the New York Times, Time, U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, and other national and international publications. Her uniquely effective parenting and teaching strategies were developed through her years of training in sociology, special education, and philosophy, as well as field-tested through her experiences as a classroom teacher, laboratory school instructor, university instructor, seminar leader, volunteer in Rwanda, and mother of three grown children. She is the author of four international bestsellers: kids are worth it! Giving Your Child the Gift of Inner Discipline; Parenting Through Crisis--Helping Kids in Times of Loss, Grief and Change; The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander--From Pre-School to High School, How Parents and Teachers Can Help Break the Cycle of Violence; and Just Because It's Not Wrong Doesn't Make It Right--From Toddlers to Teens, Teaching Kids to Think and Act Ethically. Barbara's latest book is Extraordinary Evil: A Brief History of Genocide...and Why it Matters. She also has two critically acclaimed video programs Winning at Parenting...without beating your kids and Winning at Teaching...without beating your kids.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars History Does Not Repeat Itself - It Rhymes, July 15, 2010

By 

L. King "eclectic reader" (Toronto) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Extraordinary Evil: A Short Walk to Genocide (Hardcover)

It's a good book as a starting point and I'd have no problem recommending this to child as young as 11 or 12 or to parents of those even younger. Historically the reach is quite broad. Her focus is on bullying activity as a necessary precursor to especially as much of the books shows how childhood and teen relationships reflect what is going on in the corresponding adult society. It strikes a balance. It does not drill one in graphic horror nor detailed political discussion. Yet it does not shy away from issues such as rape, child soldiers and living with the aftermath. The language is clear and the material gives a well organized overview of what is indeed a difficult subject.

Her thesis is that all genocides are similar in that they are the last worst outcome of a process of delegitimization starting not with violence but through words. We see evidence of this in the relationships between children. "If you have 10 cockroaches (cockroach being a well known derogatory term given by Tutsis by Hutus) in your town and you kill four of them, how many do you have left to kill?" was a math problem given to Rwandan school children in the 1960s. Where mass murder becomes imagined as desired it in turn becomes possible. "If 3 Jews robbed a bank and each got a part of the loot proportionate to their ages...." was a math problem given to German students in 1933. The mathematics of dehumanization becomes the calculus of destruction.

It is Coloroso's understanding of bullying that forms the central core of her book. Genocide is not just the purvey of politicians and armies. Coloroso shows that co-option of the general population is required as well. A bully while being an instigator requires not only henchmen but a hierarchy of active and passive supporters. Additionally they require an active regime to demonizes the target thus loosing moral inhibitions to attack, dissuade witnesses from seeing or believing the obvious and discourage others from acting in their defense.

Coloroso is a former nun and a forceful speaker on parenting and children's issues. I've heard her speak about bullying programs at my children's school. My own copy of this book was obtained at the book launch in 2007. Members of the Armenian community were there too, and I made a commitment at the time to find out more about what happened to them at that time.. (You will see some of that in my upcoming reviews.).

Well worth reading.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent parallel between the schoolyard and the global community, September 5, 2008

By 

Vernon Thompson (Flamingo, Costa Rica) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Extraordinary Evil: A Short Walk to Genocide (Hardcover)

Wow. I read this book under it's Canadian release name, "Extraordinary Evil: A Brief History of Genocide", which appears more fitting to the subject material. Under either name, this book takes the difficult issue of genocide and parallels it with the serious problem of bullying. Through its use of the "bully circle", it demonstrates the way governments and news media outside the conflict, as well as individuals within the conflict, can make choices to protect the defenseless or perpetuate the abuse. From my perspective as a reformed bully, this book shows the impact these choices make on millions of lives in both arenas. I would recommend this as a great text for high school sociology courses and a must-read for high school counselors, but it also serves as an excellent primer for foreign policy where claims of "conflict" serve as a smokescreen for "extraordinary evil".

4 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chilling information everyone needs to consider, January 14, 2008

By 

E. Brown (Champaign, Illinois) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Extraordinary Evil: A Short Walk to Genocide (Hardcover)

This book should be a must read. The ideas presented in this book relate directly to the happenings in our world today in the school yard and on the world scene. Those who ignore history are destined to repeat it and I hope the concepts in the this small book can help us to be more aware and less apt to repeat some of the horrors of our world.