The Great Big Book of Horrible Things
| Author | Matthew White |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | War crimes |
| Published | 2011 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 669 |
| ISBN |
The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History’s 100 Worst Atrocities is a popular history book by Matthew White, an independent scholar and self-described atrocitologist. The book provides a ranking of the hundred worst atrocities of mankind based on the number of deaths.
Matthew White, a self-described atrocitologist and a librarian at the federal courthouse in Richmond, Virginia, wrote the book in 2011. He compiled his list of hundred worst atrocities without any degree or formal training in history or statistics. Although his statistics have been used as source by scholars, including in 377 books and 183 scholarly articles. White previously administered the Historical Atlas of the 20th Century on his own website. On the subject of the number of deaths in atrocities he kept getting into arguments.
The foreword of the book was written by psychologist Steven Pinker. After the foreword the book chronologically lists the hundred atrocities. Some of these are the Khmer Rouge rule of Cambodia, An Lushan Rebellion, and World War II.
White's methodology for creating the list was gathering all available data on atrocities and attempting to discern consensus estimates for each one's death tolls. His focus is on armed conflict, with famine and disease relating to such conflict counting for the statistics, while natural disasters and economic events do not. White notes that there is no atrocity for which the statistics can be agreed upon worldwide.
One of White's conclusions is that no one system of government is obviously more murderous, and anarchy can be worst of all. He furthermore claims that governments don't kill people, rather people kill people. Another conclusion is that chaos is more deadly than tyranny.
The book was first published in hardcover by W. W. Norton & Company in November 2011. The paperback was published by W. W. Norton in May 2013 under the new title Atrocities: The 100 Deadliest Episodes in Human History. The UK edition (Canongate Books, 20 Oct 2011) is entitled Atrocitology: Humanity's 100 Deadliest Achievements. It has been translated into Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish.
...
Wikipedia