War and Genocide or The Upside of Down

War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust

Author: Doris L Bergen

Unlike most treatments of the Holocaust, this book discusses not only the persecution of the Jews, but also other segments of society victimized by the Nazis: gypsies, homosexuals, Poles, Soviet POWs, the handicapped, and others.

Table of Contents:

	Foreword
	Preface: War and Genocide: Race and Space
1	Preconditions: Antisemitism, Racism, and Common Prejudices in Early-Twentieth-Century Europe	1
2	Leadership and Will: Adolf Hitler, the National Socialist German Workers' Party, and Nazi Ideology	29
3	From Revolution to Routine: Nazi Germany, 1933-1938	53
4	Open Aggression: In Search of War, 1938-1939	81
5	Experiments in Brutality, 1939-1940: War against Poland and the So-Called Euthanasia Program	101
6	Expansion and Systematization: Exporting War and Terror, 1940-1941	131
7	The Peak Years of Killing: 1942 and 1943	161
8	Death Throes and Killing Frenzies, 1944-1945	205
	Conclusion: The Legacies of Atrocity	221
	Sources and Suggestions for Further Reading	229
	Photo Credits	243
	Index	247
	About the Author	263

Interesting textbook: Old Fashioned Dutch Oven Cookbook or Banana Split Book

The Upside of Down: The End of the World as We Know It, and Why That May Not Be Such a Bad Thing

Author: Thomas Homer Dixon

Environmental disasters. Terrorist wars. Energy scarcity. Economic failure. Is this the world's inevitable fate, a downward spiral that ultimately spells the collapse of societies? Perhaps, says acclaimed author Thomas Homer-Dixon - or perhaps these crises can actually lead to renewal for ourselves and planet earth.

The Upside of Down takes the reader on a mind-stretching tour of societies' management, or mismanagement, of disasters over time. From the demise of ancient Rome to contemporary climate change, this spellbinding book analyzes what happens when multiple crises compound to cause what the author calls "synchronous failure." But, crisis doesn't have to mean total global calamity. Through catagenesis, or creative, bold reform in the wake of breakdown, it is possible to reinvent our future.

Drawing on the worlds of archeology, poetry, politics, science, and economics, The Upside of Down is certain to provoke controversy and stir imaginations across the globe. The author's wide-ranging expertise makes his insights and proposals particularly acute, as people of all nations try to grapple with how we can survive tomorrow's inevitable shocks to our global system. There is no guarantee of success, but there are ways to begin thinking about a better world, and The Upside of Down is the ideal place to start thinking.

Foreign Affairs

In this important study of the looming dangers of social and economiccatastrophe, Homer-Dixon, a Canadian expert on the environment, security, and complex systems, argues that Western society faces a new and expanding array of challenges — oil shortages, global warming, economic instability, megaterrorism — that threaten to converge and reinforce one another, setting the stage for "synchronous failure" and the massive breakdown of our modern way of life. He uses the metaphor of an earthquake: a series of "tectonic stresses" are accumulating underneath the surface, made worse by global connectivity and the growing ability of small groups to project violence. The moment of upheaval is hard to predict, but if the stresses come together they will produce an impact greater than the sum of their parts. Homer-Dixon offers a striking vision of how to confront this world of risk and uncertainty, calling for "resilience-enhancing" strategies that protect food- and energy-supply networks and that can better cope with surprise. He effectively conveys the mentality necessary to operate in this new era but is less clear about the needed political innovations.