The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices. By Elazar Barkan. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. 456p. $18.95.

Abstract

It seems timely and appropriate that the twentieth century—the century of the Holocaust, the Gulag Archipelago, the Killing Fields, the Cultural Revolution, and the “ethnic cleansing” in the Balkans and Rwanda—ended with a wave of growing interest in healing past injustices. Human rights organizations and international commissions investigate violations of human rights. International tribunals judge political leaders, warlords, and their soldiers. Historians, political scientists, and legal theorists study the implications of such crimes and punishments.