In her major study the historian Erna Paris addresses one of the most urgent issues facing the world today - who owns and controls the past? - for decisions taken by those in power cast long shadows into the future. It is a powerful theme, but what makes her book compelling reading is that she pursues these demanding moral questions as a personal quest, building up the big picture from a series of intimate conversations with people who have lived that history or are living with its consequences. Starting with the aftermath of World War II in France, Germany and Japan, she loops back to the legacy of slavery in the American South, before moving on to South Africa, Bosnia and Rwanda, and to Argentina and Chile as she charts two competing drives - the potentially corrupting desire to control the past in order to shape the future and the aspiration to achieve a standard of universal justice.

Long Shadows

History

Erna Paris

World

Bloomsbury Paperbacks

In this groundbreaking investigation, Erna Paris explores the history of global justice, the politics behind America's opposition to the creation of a permanent international criminal court, and the implications for the world at large. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is the first permanent tribunal of its kind. The mandate of the ICC is to challenge criminal impunity on the part of national leaders and to promote accountability in world affairs at the highest level. Independent and transnational, its indictments cannot be vetoed in the Security Council. On March 11, 2003, when the new court was inaugurated in a moving ceremony, attended by over half of the countries in the world, one country was conspicuously missing from the celebrations. The government of the United States had made it clear that the International Criminal Court was not consistent with American goals and values.

The Sun Climbs Slow: The International Criminal Court and the Search for Justice (Large Print 16pt)

Foreign & International Law

ReadHowYouWant

The Garden and the Gun: A Journey Inside Israel

Semaphore Books

Approximately 200 years of Spanish history (1300-1500) are the focus of this book. Paris sketches the medieval history of the Iberian peninsula, stressing the tolerance of most of the Islamic dynasties, the relative amity between the three major religions of the area, and the flourishing culture that this relatively peaceful era nourished. The 14th century brought division within the Catholic Church itself; a plague that killed 25-30% of the population of Europe; and, in Valencia in 1391, a pogrom that gave its Jewish residents the choice of conversion or death. The "end of days" refers to the second coming of Christ, which would happen only if all the Jews were converted. Over half of the Jewish residents of Spain converted in the 14th and 15th centuries. These "conversos" were the primary target of the early Inquisition. Paris describes the early period of the Inquisition, the motives and actions of the inquisitors, and the fate of those accused. The actual expulsion of the Jews (not the conversos) in 1492 and the Moors (who were also given the opportunity to convert) in 1502 mark the climax of the events of this book.

The End of Days: A Story of Tolerance, Tyranny, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain

Lester, Orpen Dennys

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Books by Erna Paris