Benjamin Madley is associate professor of history, University of California, Los Angeles, where he focuses on Native America, the United States, and genocide in world history. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.
“As Benjamin Madley writes in An American Genocide, by 1873,
roaming bands of Indian-killers played a major role in reducing
native numbers by more than 80 percent. . . . The mass murders
raise the question: Did they constitute genocide by official
design? [Madley] thinks so. He thoroughly documents the extent of
the killings and their horrific consequences. . . . Emphasizing
‘intention and repetition’ in the California massacres, Madley
[underscores] the designing role of state and federal
officials.”—Alan Taylor, New York Times Book Review, Editors’
Choice
“Madley has documented his charge of genocide [with] prosecutorial
ferocity. . . . [His] appendices are the most complete
incident-by-incident tally ever compiled of Indian lives lost
during this terrible period. This scrupulously detailed epilogue is
the equivalent of a memorial wall that we are visiting for the
first time.”—Peter Nabokov, New York Review of Books
“Gruesomely thorough. . . . Others have described some of these
campaigns, but never in such strong terms and with so much blame
placed directly on the United States government.”—Alexander
Nazaryan, Newsweek
“By removing any doubt that genocide against Native people took
place in the most populous and prosperous state in the US, Madley
is aiming for a profound revisioning of US history as a whole. . .
. No longer will genocide be something that happened in some
distant locale—Namibia, Germany, Cambodia or Rwanda. Instead, it
took place in the same sunny clime that American culture has long
celebrated with images of fun and frolic: Disney, Hollywood, the
Beach Boys and surfers in search of the endless summer.”—Karl
Jacoby, Journal of Genocide Research
“An American Genocide has settled the issue on whether or not
genocide occurred in California.”—William Bauer Jr., Journal of
Genocide Research
“Madley has written an intensely disturbing and invaluable account
of the genocide that white Americans carried out against
California’s Indian peoples. . . . Madley’s book should move
historians of the American West to consider genocide studies as a
serious framework for analysing settler–Indian relations, and it
should also compel genocide studies scholars to reconsider their
understandings of genocide.”—Margaret D. Jacobs, Journal of
Genocide Research
“[A] stellar example of an unflinching commitment to document and
analyse . . . invasion’s often horrific consequences.”—Jeffrey
Ostler, Journal of Genocide Research
Winner, Los Angeles Times Book Award for History
2017 Winner, Raphael Lemkin Book Award from the Institute for the
Study of Genocide
Winner, Charles Redd Center / Phi Alpha Theta Award for the Best
Book on the American West
Winner, Gold Medal, California Book Award for Californiana
Winner, Heyday History Award from Heyday Books Publishing
“An American Genocide provides one of the most detailed and
stunning narratives of violence, murder, and state-sponsored
genocide in North America, making this book a major achievement in
the fields of both Native American history and Genocide
Studies.”—Ned Blackhawk, author of Violence Over the Land: Indians
and Empires in the Early American West and The Rediscovery of
America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History
"This book is a powerful contribution to the study of Native
Americans, to California history, and to genocide studies as a
whole. It should be read by every Californian."—Norman Naimark
(Stanford University), author of Stalin’s Genocides
"Benjamin Madley has changed the conversation on genocide and
American Indians. After An American Genocide, it will no longer be
possible to debate whether or not genocide took place. Instead we
will need to confront the questions of how and why genocide against
American Indians took place and what the United States owes its
indigenous communities."—Karl Jacoby (Columbia University), author
of Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of
History
“California history tells us much about the gold rush and the mass
migration it inspired, but very little of the mass destruction of
its native peoples. Benjamin Madley corrects the record with his
gripping story of what really happened: the actual genocide of a
vibrant civilization, thousands of years in the making.”—Governor
Jerry Brown
“Benjamin Madley’s book is brilliant, unsettling, and necessary. It
will change forever how we understand the history of California,
and it will make historians of other places and periods wonder what
they have missed. An American Genocide will have a long
legacy.”—Pekka Hämäläinen, author of The Comanche Empire
Ask a Question About this Product More... |