The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History's 100 Worst Atrocities by Matthew White

Jan 10, 2013 Paul rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: really-big-timeconsumers, history-will-teach-us-nothing

This book isn't in the best possible taste. Like one of those countdown programmes on cheesy tv - 2011's 100 Most Shocking Celebrity Moments it ranks massacres, wars and man-made catastrophes of limitless human suffering and discusses them all in a slightly unnerving jokey chatty unhistorianlike manner :

The Germans had come so close to winning the First World War they couldn't believe they didn't.

Communism lasted longer than fascism, jazz, John Wayne, Bonanza and the American Motor Corporation....more

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Mar 12, 2012 Adele K added it

Reading with hopes of an article on the value of statistics in understanding human atrocity--especially for those (like me) who tend to favour personal stories and even fictionalized accounts over this kind of data. We'll see what develops...

(Also: this is a whopper of a book, and while I don't often read eBooks, this one is helpful to have in this format; scrolling and searching is much easier).

Update: ended up writing a post on this topic here: http://thinkchristian.net/the-good-th...

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Jun 21, 2012 Kurt rated it 5 of 5 stars

For people who appreciate military history and the great battles waged here on Planet Earth, this is probably going to entertain you, as it did me. The personalities, settings, and sheer number of those involved with these 100 atrocities make for some fantastic non-fiction reading. However, be warned that the author does not hold back in describing some intensely gruesome scenarios -- millions of wasted souls fly out of these pages. It got me down a bit, close to the end of the book, reading abo...more

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Mar 19, 2013 Reds_reads rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013

The author, Matthew White, attempts to rank the 100 worst death tolls caused by man in history. Put like that, this book doesn't seem appealing to read and I'm sure that not everyone will like it. At times the tone is a little flippant, but for me without the small amounts of humour this would be a harder read.

What he does do well is to summarise the events clearly and dispassionately and this is welcome as many of these events will be unknown to the majority of readers, some understandably so g...more

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Sep 14, 2012 Timothy Stead rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history

A surprisingly good quality guide to mankind's worst nastiness.

I work in a bookstore and I picked this one up one day, a little apprehensively, to browse through on my lunch break. The quality of these list-style 'pop history' books tends to vary from poor to horrendous, with the overall impression being that they are churned out by hack authors with very little knowledge of the subject matters, usually relying on other dubious works.

This book though - this book wasn't half bad. For a start, Whi...more A surprisingly good quality guide to mankind's worst nastiness.

I work in a bookstore and I picked this one up one day, a little apprehensively, to browse through on my lunch break. The quality of these list-style 'pop history' books tends to vary from poor to horrendous, with the overall impression being that they are churned out by hack authors with very little knowledge of the subject matters, usually relying on other dubious works.

This book though - this book wasn't half bad. For a start, White has actually done some proper research, as a look through his bibliography shows. He also brings a good dose of scepticism to the table, pointng out biases in other historian's works and not being afraid state that quite a few of his figures are guesstimates. The book is written in an engaging and very witty style, which does bring a bit of much needed detachment to the awful subject matter. His conclusions - that civilians suffer more than soldiers in war; that chaos and societal breakdown are as deadly as more organised conflict; and that ideology can drive men and women to perform horrible deeds on their fellows - are hardly radical, but they always bear restating.

That said, I did have a few quibbles. Firstly, some will inevitably take issue with the breezy style of the book, given it's grim subject matter. I really didn't mind, as I felt it stayed on the right side of respectful, but some might. More seriously, the choice of subject areas seemed to be troublesome. Comparing the Fall of the Roman Empire - a hundred year period that involved massive social and political change and involved numerous groups and geopolitical entities - to say, the Armenian Genocide - a focused, year long killing spree in which there were clear perpetrators and victims - is realy comparing apples and oranges. My suspicion in this case is that White felt that he had to include the former somehow, but that none of the individual events in this period - the Battle of Adrianople, or the Sack of Rome - fit his criteria.

But this might be missing the point a little. This is hardly a serious work of scholarship, rather it is one that is aimed at the casual history reader. I'm a pretty hardcore history nut, and I learnt a lot from this book (especially about China). More importantly, it made me want to learn more from more specialist works. If a book like this can do that with it's accesible style, then I think it's done it's job well.(less)

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Apr 18, 2012 Susan Morris rated it 5 of 5 stars

In this book, the author attempts to list every atrocity that occurred in the history of mankind. It's an ambitious project, especially considering that many of the atrocities occurred so long ago that it's nearly impossible to validate the ancient accounts. When possible, he does verify the facts with archeological evidence, but at other times, it seemed he researched and made an educated guess based on conflicting stories. He's been criticized for that but I think he is to be commended for tak...more

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Dec 23, 2011 Mary Overton added it

From the introduction:
"Aside from morbid fascination, is there any reason to know the one hundred highest body counts of history? Four reasons come to mind:
"First, things that happen to a lot of people are usually more important than things that happen to only a few people....
"Second, killing a person is the most you can do to him....
"Therefore, just by default, my one hundred multicides had a maximum impact on an enormous number of people. Without too much debate, I can easily label these to be...more

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Oct 25, 2011 Dana rated it 5 of 5 stars

You know that scene in Maus Part II when Art Spiegelman, seated at his drawing board, is perched high up on a Holocaust bodypile? Okay. Matthew White is made of something *steely* because this man's work has him sitting on top of not just *a* tragic body pile, but *the* tragic body pile, the ENTIRE HUMAN BODYPILE. And I just spent the last couple of evenings mountaineering with him to the human bodypile's damnable peak. From up here, let me tell you what it was like: I was impressed because I am...more

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Dec 29, 2011 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: american-history, ancient-history, british-history, chinese-history, french-history, history, military, modern-history, non-fiction, politics, religion, roman-history, world-history

I expected to be utterly depressed throughout my reading of this fascinating trip down Atrocity Lane, but instead I found myself enthralled by the history being presented to me and the different way it was being presented. Though the sordid history of humanity is quite the cautionary tale in how we fail to treat each other in the ways in which we wish them to treat us, from slavery to warfare to acts of genocide to politically and racially induced famines, "The Great Big Book of Horrible Things"...more

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Aug 18, 2012 Adrian added it

The book I read was titled 'Atrocitology Humanity's 100 Deadliest Achievements'. White ranks man-made causes of death devoting between a page and ten pages to each and covers them chronologically. Most of the 100 are wars but not all. I appreciated his irreverance and lack of political correctness. He stands controversially with Marvin Harris in explaining Aztec human sacrifice as a need for protein. A valuable point is made about doubt historians have for the scale of murder caused by Chinggis...more

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Mar 09, 2012 Blake Stilwell rated it 5 of 5 stars

This guy writes with so little emotion about world events, it's hilarious. For example, he describes the Crusades as a fight to control the tourist trade. Also, it's comical how easily humanity resorts cannibalism. Loved it.

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Jan 19, 2012 Alden rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history

The first thing you need to know about The Great Big Book of Horrible things is, you're going to not only learn things, but you'll at times be embarrassed about the things you know almost nothing about. The worst genocide since the Holocaust occurred in Bangladesh in 1971? The bloodiest war since WWII, the Second Congo War, ended less than ten years ago, and nobody in the United States noticed? 20 million Indians died in the 1800s due to famines that the British didn't want to respond to?

Makes y...more

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Feb 23, 2013 Boria Sax rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is, to my knowledge, the first time that anyone has attempted a statistical comparison of all the atrocities committed against, and by, humankind throughout history. The greatest number killed, to nobody's surprise, is the second world war. Tied for second to third place are Mao Zedong and Chinggis Khan, but the fourth may startle people - famines in British India. Matthew White has, in most respects, done a remarkably fine job. Nobody will come to such a project without biases, but he gene...more This is, to my knowledge, the first time that anyone has attempted a statistical comparison of all the atrocities committed against, and by, humankind throughout history. The greatest number killed, to nobody's surprise, is the second world war. Tied for second to third place are Mao Zedong and Chinggis Khan, but the fourth may startle people - famines in British India. Matthew White has, in most respects, done a remarkably fine job. Nobody will come to such a project without biases, but he generally states his openly and even attempts to compensate for them. He always notes alternative estimates of deaths, tries to explain discrepancies, and gives reasons for his selection among them. Despite the emotionally charged subject matter, his style is remarkably relaxed, and he manages to avoid any trace or either sanctimoniousness or sensationalism.

One of the few issues on which I believe he has probably been evasive is the number killed by Stalin. In his text, he estimates this at 20 to 30 million, but, instead of going by mean of various various scholarly estimates (Applebaum, for example, gives 28 million), as he does elsewhere, he uses the low estimate of 20 million in ranking Stalin's regime in his list of atrocities. I suspect that he does not wish to let Stalin exceed Hitler as a despot, since the comparison of the two is a sensitive issue for some people. But we cannot criticize very much White for a little fudging here, since most writers on the subject are guilty of far worse. Since victimization in our culture has become a matter of status, and even a gateway to privileges, you have people throwing around vast, often inflated, numbers of people killed, in a macabre competition, and we need a sober voice like White's to at least place events in perspective.

The first thing that we may notice is the lack of any very obvious pattern in the atrocities. That conclusion might sound a bit mundane, but it is necessary to counter the many highly oversimplified assertions, which place the blame on a single cause such as, for example, backwardness, modernity, religion, atheism, Jude-Christian tradition, communism, capitalism, nature, and so on. Atrocities can occur under a wide range of governments, and can be rationalized by many ideologies.

My major reservation about the book is the concern as to whether White has carried his statistical comparisons too far. Yes, at least rough comparisons are in order, but is it going a bit far to place the greatest atrocities in history in exact rank from one to a hundred? Taking into account the vast methodological difficulties, acknowledged openly by White, in the comparisons, I suspect that he is relying on statistics a bit too much. (less)

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Apr 29, 2013 Eddy Allen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: arts-and-historical

Evangelists of human progress meet their opposite in Matthew White's epic examination of history's one hundred most violent events, or, in White's piquant phrasing, "the numbers that people want to argue about." Reaching back to 480 BCE's second Persian War, White moves chronologically through history to this century's war in the Congo and devotes chapters to each event, where he surrounds hard facts (time and place) and succinct takeaways (who usually gets the blame?) with lively military, soci...more

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Jan 09, 2013 David Brown rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

There’s no question that mankind is the most dangerous species in the world. We’re capable of a lot of devastation against and, as Matthew White’s book proves, each other. White has researched our history and come up with our 100 deadliest achievements going back to Ancient Greece and continuing throughout the timelines to the twentieth century. There are no happy endings in this book but there are many frightening statistics and accounts of just how horrible our predecessors have been to each o...more There’s no question that mankind is the most dangerous species in the world. We’re capable of a lot of devastation against and, as Matthew White’s book proves, each other. White has researched our history and come up with our 100 deadliest achievements going back to Ancient Greece and continuing throughout the timelines to the twentieth century. There are no happy endings in this book but there are many frightening statistics and accounts of just how horrible our predecessors have been to each other.

White’s book lists the Top 100 atrocities in order towards the end. The bulk of the book is written in chronological order with one or two pages devoted to the lesser atrocities whereas those that grace the top ten are worthy of much lengthier accounts. Each section gives you the name of the atrocity, when it took place, where it took place and the staggering death toll involved. White doesn’t claim to have definitive and accurate statistics on the death tolls. What he has done is look at previous tallies from other researchers and tried to make an educated guess. Although these are estimates, the numbers are frightening.

The deadliest atrocity in history is hardly a surprising one but it still makes for grim reading going through a familiar story but such a costly one. Two individuals are joint second in the list, with 40,000,000 deaths each attributed to them! It just doesn’t seem possible but worryingly it really happened. The World Wars, Vietnam and the Korean War are some of the 20th century conflicts featured here, while the Napoleonic Wars, the Hundred Years War, the Taiping Rebellion and the Punic Wars are just a selection of other struggles that make the list. Individuals include Tamerlane, Peter the Great, Idi Amin, Genghis Khan, Stalin and Mao. White even includes analysis of his research including motives for many of the atrocities.

Atrocitology is a fascinating read but the magnitude of these 100 atrocities is hard to take. The pattern of war throughout history retains many consistencies, especially the impact it has on civilians rather than the soldiers involved in the fighting. Many people today will still remember the worst atrocity in history and the 20th century proved just how meticulous we became at harming one another.(less)

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Dec 19, 2012 Michael Burnam-fink rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, history

This book is unbelievable. Not the numbers; White does an admirable job seeking reasonable consensus views based on a variety of sources, and explains the limits of his knowledge and the biases of the historical record. Not the basic fact of man's inhumanity to man; as a species, we are horrific monsters. What's unbelievable is that anybody could write such a book and not wind up insane/dead/torn from reality by Yog-Sothoth.

Each of the 100 atrocities (minimum 300,000 deaths) is covered in a brie...more

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Dec 17, 2012 Zeke Chase rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

I've only flipped through a few of the sections in this book, but so far I'm loving it. It's not a book to read from page 1 on, but rather an encyclopaedia of all wars, massacres and genocides with a death toll of over 100,000. Admit it, it's the numbers you want, and this has them all, from Qin Shi Huang to Tamerlane, Hannibal to the Mahdi of Sudan. There's a chapter for every one, which lists the vital stats including death toll, unanswered questions, and who usually gets the blame.

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Apr 16, 2012 Cwiegard rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone who finds history fascinating

This is a surprisingly fascinating examination of the dark side of human history- the ways in which large numbers of humans die at the hands of other humans. We learn among other things that 3 million or more people died in the Roman gladiatorial games over some 700 years. Who knew? White may not be a Harvard professor, but he is clearly a bright man who has done a lot of research and thought deeply. It is well worth reading. This turns out to NOT be a freak show or a list of horrors- it is an h...more

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Apr 02, 2012 Nelson is currently reading it

So far so good...some best lines I read so far:

"While fighting over land is quite common, the land in dispute usually provides some practical resource - minerals, crops, harbors, farms, strategic location, exploitable labor, or sheer size. Palestine has none of these. The sole resource of the Holy Land is heritage. There's no gold, no oil, very little fertile land, and few natives, nothing but sacred sites, so in essence, the Crusades killed 3 million people in a fight to control the tourist tra...more

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Mar 16, 2012 Dale Muckerman rated it 5 of 5 stars

I picked this book up thinking I would read a little here and there, but I ended up reading it straight through from beginning to end. It really puts a perspective on history and on the extremes of human nature. Before you think times are bad now, read this book and get a perspective on what's happened in the past. It's amazing how cruel people have been. It's amazing how complicit religion has been in wholesale death and war. But what's most amazing is how no matter what some of these villains...more

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Oct 07, 2012 Stephen Cranney rated it 4 of 5 stars

Like a lot of pop-history books, this one is a little lacking in details; but this is forgivable because of the sheer amount of material he covers. People often have these "who was the worst" person discussions, and body counts inevitably get brought up, so it was nice to have a source that compiles all the different arguments.

Also, we've all heard of the Holocaust, Stalin, etc., but there were a lot of these genocides and massacres that I had never heard about before (Bengali Genocide, etc.),...more

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Jan 25, 2012 Shana Dennis rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction, morbid

This book had a good chance of being dry and rambling, given the subject matter, but the author's tone and way of explaining each event kept me reading. White does not pin down a single cause for all of the horrible things in his great big book, which I liked. It is a bad historian that does that; a good historian recognizes that the world doesn't function in terms of black and white.

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May 10, 2013 Olethros rated it 4 of 5 stars

-Sistematizar datos para obtener información, especialmente en algunos temas, es francamente loable, por terrible que sea el asunto-.

Género. Ensayo.

Lo que nos cuenta. Tras explicarnos el autor su idea, intención y método respecto a la identificación de las mayores matanzas de la Historia, nos embarcamos en un viaje que nos llevará a través de 25 siglos desde la Segunda Guerra Médica hasta la Segunda Guerra del Congo, en el que se nos relatan los hechos más relevantes de cada uno de los aconteci...more

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Jul 07, 2012 Bill Young rated it 5 of 5 stars

Here's my review. My best book of the year so far.

http://blog.newsok.com/okiereads/2012...

And to my Goodreads friends, I promise to do a better job putting up my reviews and recommendations.

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Apr 04, 2013 Olethros rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

-Sistematizar datos para obtener información, especialmente en algunos temas, es francamente loable, por terrible que sea el asunto-.

Género. Ensayo.

Lo que nos cuenta. Tras explicarnos el autor su idea, intención y método respecto a la identificación de las mayores matanzas de la Historia, nos embarcamos en un viaje que nos llevará a través de 25 siglos desde la Segunda Guerra Médica hasta la Segunda Guerra del Congo, en el que se nos relatan los hechos más relevantes de cada uno de los aconteci...more

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Mar 06, 2013 Vincent Tan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A compendium of massacres throughout the history of mankind. Disturbing to realise how comprehensive a history of human civilisation this book proved to be... I learnt a lot of history I never knew.

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Aug 27, 2012 Harley Gee rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: history

I really enjoyed this book. It tries to put the all the atrocities of history into perspective. More of a reference work than cover to cover read, it is written in a relatively light voice. There was a great chart based on the information assembled here that I stumbled on and I purchased the book, in part, because it put the entire history of mankind on a single (large) page. Unfortunately, the chart itself is not contained in the book. Still the book is wonderful because it compiles so much use...more

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Dec 25, 2012 Colin Williams rated it 3 of 5 stars

Hey! Is this the American version of Atrocitology? Is it the American version because Americans cannot sound out words like "atrocitology?" How atrocious!

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Feb 27, 2012 Paul Valente rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Fascinating account of the deadliest multicides in history, written in a refreshingly non-academic but engaging style, scrupulously impartial and thoroughly absorbing.

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Sep 05, 2012 Steven Gilchrist rated it 5 of 5 stars

I love this book. White has such a dark sense of humor, but I guess that is a prerequisite to write a book about the top 100 tragedies in human history.

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