A shattering history of the last hundred years of genocidal war that itemises in authoritative, persuasive manner exactly what the West knew and when, and what it chose to do, and what not to do, with that knowledge. The United States has never in its history intervened to stop genocide and has in fact rarely even made a point of condemning it as it occurred. Tackling the argument that successive US leaders were unaware of genocidal horrors as they were occurring, Samantha Power seeks to establish precisely how much was known and when, and claims that much tragedy could readily have been averted. It is clear that the failure to intervene was usually caused not by ignorance or impotence, but by considered political inaction. Power notes that no US president has ever suffered politically for his indifference to its occurrence. This riveting book makes a powerful case for why America must make such indifference a thing of the past.