Atrocities, Massacres, and War Crimes: An Encyclopedia

Readers will find this set at once enlightening and depressing; the former because it is well written and thoroughly researched, the latter because it represents a litany of murder, rape, and torture (the entry on Josef Stalin, for example, describes how the unchallenged leader's political purges resulted in a greater loss of life than the Holocaust). Mikaberidze (history, Louisiana State Univ., Shreveport) presides over 400-plus alphabetically arranged signed entries covering individuals, events, ideas, treaties, geographic locations, and more, all in an effort to give researchers the "big picture" of the haves mistreating the have nots in both war and peace. The emphasis is on the 20th century, but examples are culled from prehistory onward. Special features include a "Chronology of Massacres and War Crimes," a glossary, a general bibliography, and two indexes, one by topic and the other a traditional alphabetical listing.