Peter Balakian is the author of Black Dog of Fate, winner of the PEN/Martha Albrand Prize for Memoir and a New York Times Notable Book, and June-tree: New and Selected Poems 1974-2000. He is the recipient of many awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. He holds a Ph.D. in American Civilization from Brown University and teaches at Colgate University, where he is a Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities.
"In this important book, Balakian proves adept at presenting both human horror and political tragedy." -- BooklistThe terrible fate of the Armenians... is brilliantly described. A great service to the history of the Armenians." -- Sir Martin Gilbert, author of The Righteous: the Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust"An eloquent account of Turkey's long campaign to rid itself of Armenians....Thoroughly convincing." -- Kirkus Reviews"Peter Balakian tells the powerful and largely unknown story of [Armenian Genocide]. This important and compelling book is long overdue." -- Deborah E. Lipstadt, Ph.D., Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies Director, Emory University"The Burning Tigris is an act of acute historical memory, of personal testimony, of prophetic witness - and of high art." -- James Carroll, author of Constantine's Sword and Secret Father"A gripping treatment of the official Turkish mass murder...a masterpiece of moral history...it needs to be widely read." -- Paul Fussell, author of The Great War and Modern Memory and Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War"Balakian tells a story long ripe for the telling.... He writes with grace and power." -- Jean Bethke Elshtain, Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics, The University of Chicago, author of Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World"[A] fascinating and affecting memoir." -- New York Times Book Review"Richly imagined and carefully documented." -- The New Yorker"[An] engrossing and poignant memoir." -- San Francisco Chronicle"A mighty work, a slow burn of muted eloquence, dense with scholarship...compelling." -- Forward
Now faded from memory in the shadow of the Holocaust, the Turkish slaughter of more than a million Armenians in 1915-1916 was a virtual template for the 20th-century horrors that followed, and much of what Balakian describes so powerfully is now chillingly familiar: inhuman brutality; mass deportations of helpless civilians (often in overcrowded railroad boxcars); headlines screaming of "systematic race extermination"; activists and intellectuals calling for intervention; and, most devastatingly, the lack of political will in the West to intervene to stop the slaughter. Balakian exposes the roots of the genocide in the "total war" atmosphere of WWI, which combusted with the pan-Turkish nationalism of the Young Turk government, inflamed Muslim rage against "infidel" Armenian Christians, and a long-simmering Ottoman hatred of the Armenians dating to Sultan Abdul Hamid II and his slaughters in the 1890s. Balakian, who wrote so movingly of the impact of the genocide on his own family in Black Dog of Fate, also underscores how well known the Armenian destruction was in America through detailed reports by U.S. consuls throughout Turkey and steady newspaper reporting, and how great the response was in providing humanitarian assistance to refugees and survivors. In a horrifying account, city by city, region by region, Balakian quotes firsthand testimony about the decimation of the Armenian population and their towns and culture. Yet he retains the measured tone of a historian throughout; if anything, he lets Woodrow Wilson off too easily for not declaring war on Turkey. But readers will come away sadly convinced that Armenians' brave but doomed stand in Van should be as celebrated as the Warsaw ghetto uprising, and the corpse-strewn Lake Gaeljak as well known as Babi Yar. 16 pages of b&w photos and maps not seen by PW. (Oct. 7) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
"In this important book, Balakian proves adept at presenting both human horror and political tragedy." -- BooklistThe terrible fate of the Armenians... is brilliantly described. A great service to the history of the Armenians." -- Sir Martin Gilbert, author of The Righteous: the Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust"An eloquent account of Turkey's long campaign to rid itself of Armenians....Thoroughly convincing." -- Kirkus Reviews"Peter Balakian tells the powerful and largely unknown story of [Armenian Genocide]. This important and compelling book is long overdue." -- Deborah E. Lipstadt, Ph.D., Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies Director, Emory University"The Burning Tigris is an act of acute historical memory, of personal testimony, of prophetic witness - and of high art." -- James Carroll, author of Constantine's Sword and Secret Father"A gripping treatment of the official Turkish mass murder...a masterpiece of moral history...it needs to be widely read." -- Paul Fussell, author of The Great War and Modern Memory and Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War"Balakian tells a story long ripe for the telling.... He writes with grace and power." -- Jean Bethke Elshtain, Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics, The University of Chicago, author of Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World"[A] fascinating and affecting memoir." -- New York Times Book Review"Richly imagined and carefully documented." -- The New Yorker"[An] engrossing and poignant memoir." -- San Francisco Chronicle"A mighty work, a slow burn of muted eloquence, dense with scholarship...compelling." -- Forward
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