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The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response
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- What People are Saying
In this national bestseller, the critically acclaimed author Peter Balakian brings us a riveting narrative of the massacres of the Armenians in the 1890s and of the Armenian Genocide in 1915 at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. Using rarely seen archival documents and remarkable first-person accounts, Balakian presents the chilling history of how the Turkish government implemented the first modern genocide behind the cover of World War I. And in the telling, he resurrects an extraordinary lost chapter of American history.
Awarded the Raphael Lemkin Prize for the best scholarly book on genocide by the Institute for Genocide Studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice/CUNY Graduate Center.
ISBN-13: 9780060558703
Media Type: Paperback
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication Date: 10-05-2004
Pages: 528
Product Dimensions: 5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.19(d)
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.
The Burning TigrisRead an Excerpt
The Armenian Genocide and America's ResponseChapter One
A Gathering at Faneuil Hall
Ah, Mrs. Howe, you have given us a prose Battle Hymn.
-- Frederick Greenhalge,
governor of Massachusetts<
Introduction The Burning Tigris tells the story of Turkey's attempt to destroy the Armenian people, the 20th century's first genocide, and America's response to it -- this country's first entry into the arena of international human rights. Balakian's beautifully researched narrative guides the reader through eyewitness accounts, documentation, and the Turkish government's continued denial of historical fact. The book allows the reader an in-depth look into the truth of history and human nature at its best and worst. Balakian's restrained and eloquent prose reminds us that by looking accurately into history we can change the present and the future. Armenia is one of the oldest Christian civilizations in the world, and its people had lived in what became the Turkish Ottoman Empire long before the OttomanTurks arrived. By the end of the 19th century, the Armenians were a thriving and complex society of professionals; artists, writers, farmers, and craftspeople, and were adapting to a modern and cosmopolitan worldview. But as a minority in the Ottoman Empire, the Armenians endured years of discrimination. One of the most important themes in The Burning Tigris is the examination of the subtle ways in which years of cultural and religious prejudice, unchecked and unexamined, laid the ground for genocide. A lethal combination of political and religious fanaticism became the basis for an ideology that made it not only acceptable -- but practically mandatory -- to torture, massacre, and finally attempt to completely annihilate an entire people. Balakian's detailed and unflinching presentation of the story shows the many results of xenophobia taken to its most shocking extreme. The "Young Turk" regime in 1915 initiated a systematic program to exterminate the Armenian people, and word of the horrors reached the United States. The response of leaders such as Henry Morganthau, American Ambassador to Turkey, and many humanitarians in the U.S. was powerful and immediate. The result was an unprecedented grassroots campaign involving everyone from ordinary Americans to missionaries to the wealthiest business moguls and several Presidents, all of whom cared greatly and wanted to help. The movement to save the Armenians was defeated by the growing U.S. dependence on oil and what Balakian calls "dollar diplomacy." This, combined with the ongoing denials by the Turkish government, led to the failure of the relief effort to result in justice for the Armenians after World War I and to the cultural amnesia that persists today. Where once the plight of the "starving Armenians" was familiar to every schoolchild in America, today few of us even realize that genocide was committed before the attempted extermination of the Jews in Hitler's Germany. This erasure is, as this book powerfully demonstrates, the final step in genocide. Hitler himself was inspired by what happened in Turkey, and asked, eight days before the Nazis invaded Poland, "Who today, after all, speaks of the annihilation of the Armenians?" Although Balakian's book is a story of enormous human suffering, it is also an important testimony to the power of truth, to the human will to survive against great odds. In exploring the danger of fanaticism in all forms, it is -- an important book written on how ideology can result in unthinkable crimes against humanity. Questions for Discussion About the Author 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 Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities.Reading Group Guide
11. Balakian closes his narrative by retelling the many failed attempts of a Congressional resolution to recognize the Armenian Genocide as fact. The Turkish government continues to threaten any government that wants to pass such a resolution, and Presidents Carter and Clinton were forced to comply. France, however, passed a resolution in 2001. Why is the Turkish government still unwilling to admit what happened? Why do you think the U.S. government gives in to this kind of pressure?
“Peter Balakian tells the powerful and largely unknown story of [Armenian Genocide]. This important and compelling book is long overdue.”
The terrible fate of the Armenians... is brilliantly described. A great service to the history of the Armenians.”
“A gripping treatment of the official Turkish mass murder...a masterpiece of moral history...it needs to be widely read.”
“Balakian tells a story long ripe for the telling.... He writes with grace and power.”
“The Burning Tigris is an act of acute historical memory, of personal testimony, of prophetic witness - and of high art.”What People are Saying About This
Deborah E. Lipstadt