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From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. The story of the Ottoman Empire's slaughter of one million Armenians in 1915—a genocide still officially denied by the 83-year-old modern Turkish state—has been dominated by two historiographical traditions. One pictures an embattled empire, increasingly truncated by rapacious Western powers and internal nationalist movements. The other details the attempted eradication of an entire people, amid persecutions of other minorities. Part of historian Akçam's task in this clear, well-researched work is to reconcile these mutually exclusive narratives. He roots his history in an unsparing analysis of Turkish responsibility for one of the most notorious atrocities of a singularly violent century, in internal and international rivalries, and an exclusionary system of religious (Muslim) and ethnic (Turkish) superiority. With novel use of key Ottoman, European and American sources, he reveals that the mass killing of Armenians was no byproduct of WWI, as long claimed in Turkey, but a deliberate, centralized program of state-sponsored extermination. As Turkey now petitions to join the European Union, and ethnic cleansing and collective punishment continues to threaten entire populations around the globe, this groundbreaking and lucid account by a prominent Turkish scholar speaks forcefully to all. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
Akcam has attracted considerable attention for being one of the first Turkish intellectuals to devote his career to studying the systematic slaughter of one million Armenians during World War I. For this reason, he has been harshly criticized by those who would deny the existence of an Armenian genocide. Akcam's earlier work, From Empire to Republic (2004), contextualized the genocide within a climate of Turkish nationalism and attempted to provide the basis for a Turkish national conversation about trauma and culpability. Although essentially similar to that book in its analysis of Turkish culpability, his latest study is considerably broader in historical scope. He seeks to harmonize the conventional narrative of the collapsing Ottoman Empire with victims' perspectives of Turkish dominance over minorities. He does this by showing a state--rent by internal power struggles and terrified of being partitioned--that pursues genocide as a way of avoiding catastrophic collapse. Clearly a companion to Peter Balakian's Burning Tigris (2003) and other accounts of the genocide, this book also deserves to be read in concert with recent works analyzing the politics of genocide and national shame in Germany. Brendan Driscoll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A truly monumental work,
By
This review is from: A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (Paperback)
Finally, a Turkish author, using original archival material, dares to tackle the Armenian Genocide using an objective, rigorous approach. This exquisite piece of research leaves the reader with little doubt about the intentions of the Turkish rulers of the time. The book is fair, but also shows a lot of courage from the author. A truly monumental work on a difficult and thorny subject. Well done Mr Akçam !
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.4 out of 5 stars (28 customer reviews)
5.0 out of 5 stars
An important and needed work,
By Arresto Vendetta - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (Paperback)
This book provides a succinct and clear summary of the Armenian genocide, and its consequences for thinking about national responsibility. The author's subsequent books, The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012) and Judgment at Istanbul: The Armenian Genocide Trials, with Vahakn Dadrian (New York: Berghahn Books, 2011) are more detailed and probably better suited for those readers who are interested in the historiographical details of research on this genocide.Read this book. 32 of 51 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
crimes against humanity,
By Michael Nicolaidi - Published on Amazon.com
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This review is from: A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (Paperback)
One of the many achievements of Taner Akcam's excellent, provoking and unsentimental 'A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the question of Turkish Responsibility' is in shifting a generally acknowledged human disgrace from the particular to the whole.This impeccably researched and written historical tragedy, is specifically aimed at the people of Turkey to consider the suffering inflicted in their name on minorities, especially the Armenians,living within the borders of the Ottoman Empire prior to, during and immediately following the First World War. But equally, he is alert to the self-interest and lack of responsibility shown by the major Western powers, all sheltering uneasily together under the umbrella of an evolving World War that inevitably occurred. This included Russia in a state of revolution itself. As Akcam unerringly concludes, the Great Powers used the terms human rights and democracy to "legitimize the most obvious colonial moves" towards Ottoman territory and the Turkish people began to view these notions as "Western hypocrisy." Following the international failure post-war and subsequently to bring perpetrators of the Armenian genocide to justice, Akcam suggests mankind may not yet be able "to draw a clear line of division between humanitarian goals, on the one hand, and a state's economic and political interests, on the other." In this situation, which would seem to apply to the great majority of major and minor players of our globe's so-called United Nations, how can we (as Akcam says) "come to a consensus about ethical norms." As long as man and womankind harbour and prefer for whatever reason to express actively or passively negative qualities like self-interest,greed, pride and dominance, violence and war and "crimes against humanity" will continue. Nevertheless,it is a book such as this, so ably scribed and argued, that offers new hope and, perhaps ultimately, relief from our darkest propensities. 89 of 147 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best book ever written on Armenian genocide,
By Stephen Feinstein - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (Hardcover)
This book shows that Taner Akcam has emerged as the leading Turkish historian who possesses the linguistic knowledge (reading of Ottoman Turkish) and access to archives in Turkey to tackle the subject that is the source of denial by the Turkish State. This book without exception is the most readable and best documented to support the Armenian case of being victims of genocide in 1915 and explains that even the government of Mustafa Kemal understood and recognized the genocide. Akcam explains that the title of the book, "A Shameful Act" is from a speech by Kemal himself. But in addition to a clear explanation of the facts without polemic, Akcam clearly understands that denial of the genocide is a threat to Turkish democracy. He dedicates the book to a "righteous Turk" who saved Armenians. This brings his writing and empathy closer to that of the most serious works that attempt to understand the Holocaust. Genocide studies can be thankful for Akcam's research and writing. The support for the book has also come from very positive reviews in top newspapers and journals. This is a great achievement and a must read.
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