Books: Non-Fiction

One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps

Book — Non-fiction. By Andrea Pitzer. 2017. 480 pages.
Starting with 1890s Cuba, this book is a chronological and geopolitical history of concentration camps that is filled with prisoner perspectives.

Time Periods: 19th Century, 20th Century, 21st Century, All US History
Themes: Criminal Justice & Incarceration, Immigration, Wars & Related Anti-War Movements, World History/Global Studies

 One Long Night A Global History of Concentration Camps by Andrea Pitzer In this harrowing work based on archival records and interviews during travel to four continents, Andrea Pitzer reveals the chronological and geopolitical history of concentration camps.

Beginning with 1890s Cuba, she pinpoints concentration camps around the world and across decades. From the Philippines and Southern Africa in the early twentieth century to the Soviet Gulag and detention camps in China and North Korea during the Cold War, camp systems have been used as tools for civilian relocation and political repression. Often justified as a measure to protect a nation, or even the interned groups themselves, camps have instead served as brutal and dehumanizing sites that have claimed the lives of millions.

Drawing from exclusive testimony, landmark historical scholarship, and stunning research, Andrea Pitzer unearths the roots of this appalling phenomenon, exploring and exposing the staggering toll of the camps: our greatest atrocities, the extraordinary survivors, and even the intimate, quiet moments that have also been part of camp life during the past century. [Publisher’s description.]

ISBN: 9780316303583 | Little, Brown and Company

Related Media

NPR podcast Code Switch‘s broadcast episode America’s Concentration Camps? (July 3, 2019) about the “debate over what to call the facilities holding migrant asylum seekers at the southern border.” The segment includes interviews with author Andrea Pitzer and Karen Ishizuka, chief curator at the Japanese American National Museum.

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