Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning

In his most provocative and uncompromising work, renowned historian Timothy Snyder offers a radically new perspective on the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century. Drawing on unique archival documents and eyewitness testimony, Snyder reconstructs events in the territories of “double occupation” — including Ukraine — where the destruction of state borders turned entire regions into lawless zones in which human life was worth nothing.
But the central message of Black Earth is a warning. The author draws troubling parallels with the present: global climate change, concerns over food security, and the crisis of international law make our twenty-first-century world far closer to the era of the 1930s than we might wish to believe. This is a warning the world must heed if humanity is to avoid repeating its own catastrophic mistakes.