• Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2014 April #2
  Alvarez tackles the complex question of whether or not the post-contact decimation of Native American populations, magnified by events such as the Sand Creek Massacre, constituted genocide. He defines genocide as an attempt to destroy a population group. Further, he concludes that genocide entails a strategy, not just an event or series of events. It's through this lens that he views a selection of massacres, waves of disease, forced removal to reservations, and native children's mandatory attendance at military and church-run boarding schools, in his attempt to ascertain whether any of these qualify as genocide. Wounded Knee and the Sand Creek Massacre he labels as isolated events, not committed as acts of policy meant to exterminate entire tribes. The Long Walk of the Navajo to the Bosque Redondo Alvarez calls "traumatic," but not genocidal, for it was intended to kill Navajo culture, but leave the people alive—the crux, he says, of cultural genocide. In his sensitive treatment of this difficult issue, Alvarez strikes a balance between scholarly pragmatism and a humanist's empathy for the victims of this immense tragedy. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.

Alex Alvarez is professor of criminology and criminal justice at Northern Arizona University. He was the founding director of the Martin-Springer Institute for Teaching the Holocaust, Tolerance, and Humanitarian Values. He is author or coauthor of several books, including Murder American Style, Violence: The Enduring Problem, and Governments, Citizens, and Genocide, and Genocidal Crimes.