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Man not only lives within history; he is changed by it, and he causes it to change. This interplay between individual lives and wider historical forces is many-sided, erratic, seemingly contradictory, charged as it is by capricious human emotions. Yet there are common patterns—shared images and styles of imagery—which men call forth in their efforts to deal with the threat and promise of a changing outer and inner world. These patterns can sometimes be seen most clearly in cultures outside of one's own, and I have found them to be extremely vivid in present-day Japan.

Of all the horrors human beings perpetrate, genocide stands near the top of the list. Its toll is staggering: well over 100 million dead worldwide. Why Did They Kill? is one of the first anthropological attempts to analyze the origins of genocide. In it, Alexander Hinton focuses on the devastation that took place in Cambodia from April 1975 to January 1979 under the Khmer Rouge in order to explore why mass murder happens and what motivates perpetrators to kill. Basing his analysis on years of investigative work in Cambodia, Hinton finds parallels between the Khmer Rouge and the Nazi regimes. P

Robert J. Lifton, Eric Markusen: "Die Psychologie des Völkermords". Atomkrieg und Holocaust. Aus dem Amerikanischen von Hans Günter Holl. Verlag Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1992. 358 S., geb., 48,- DM