I don't know if it was because I saw the movie before reading the book, or if it was because I had been reading extremely hard books for the same class for the two weeks prior, but I just couldn't get as involved with this one. I still really liked it though, it's amazing what Rusesabagina was able to do with just liquor, a book full of contacts, and a very good sense of what needed to be said to whom--he did save more than 1,200 people during the Rwandan genocide of 1994, after all. I'd definit More...

An autoboigraphy of Paul Rusesabagina, the man who inspired the movie Hotel Rwanda. I found the movie compelling and memorable and when I saw the book on Kimberlie's list decided I really wanted to read it. Having little knowledge of Rwanda, this book provided me with enough history to understand better the forces at work in Rwanda leading to the genocide of 1994, as well as enough of Paul's personal observations on the culture, geography, and personality of the people that I felt a love for the More...

First, listening to this book on audio was extremely powerful. So much so that I actually had to stop the CD, stop the car, then turn it back on to listen to because it was so moving and was making it hard for me to concentrate on driving. The author manages to use direct language to tell his amazing story of being the manager of a hotel in Rwanda during the genocide. He managed to turn the hotel into a refugee base and, amazingly, held off the militia and other killers for 76 days, saving the l More...

Paul Rusesabagina is an Oscar Schindler for Africa, for the late 20th century. Less than fifty years after the Nuremburg trials, with endless 'never again' promises ringing in the world's ears, a French-sponsored government killed a million people in a matter of weeks, leaving their corpses where they fell in their lust for another kill. The Clinton administration refused to help, the Mitterand presidency actively supported the killers, the Belgians bulked at the monster they had created and the More...

Near the end of An Ordinary Man, author Paul Rusesabagina sums up the genocide in Rwanda with a reminder that “the message crept into our national consciousness very slowly. It did not happen all at once. We did not wake up one morning to hear it pouring out of the radio at full strength. It started with a sneering comment, the casual use of the term “cockroach”, the almost humorous suggestion that Tutsis should be airmailed back to Ethiopia.”

This theme also turns up in book I read before An Ord More...

The book's title is a wry understatement: it is an autobiography of Paul Rusesabagina, the hotel manager whose courage, resourcefulness, shrewd tact and personal presence saved more than 1000 lives when a spasm of genocide swept Rwanda in 1994. It is the story of his entire life, from village childhood in the "country of a thousand hills" in central Africa, to reluctant exile after the genocide. If you have seen the film "Hotel Rwanda," you already know about him. But where a movie, even a powe More...

An Ordinary Man is the story of Paul Rusesabagina during the genocide in Rwanda from April through July, 1994. Paul’s experiences were the inspiration for the gripping film, Hotel Rwanda starring Don Cheadle as Paul Rusesabagina. Reading Paul’s story, one realizes that even in the darkest hours of man’s brutality to other men, hope, slim as it may appear, remains.

Paul’s book has several messages. First, he emphasizes the power of words. For him, his words are what kept himself, his family, and More...

Paul Rusesabagina may be an ordinary man but he tells an extraordinary story. During the Rwandan genocide, he protected 1,268 people in the luxury hotel he was managing. His assets: a swimming pool full of water; a large supply of alcoholic beverages; a long list of important connections (many of whom owed him personal favors); a secret telephone line that was never cut; training in (and I'm sure a personal talent for) the art of negotiation. The swimming pool was for water rations. The rest was More...

Paul Rusesabagina was a well trained Rwandan man, starting with his father's training, growing up in a small village. Paul developed a strong work ethic working in the fields. He was a keen observer of his father and his friends. His father modeled how to help others during times of crisis; His father offered shelter to the distressed, running for their lives. His father's words were always profound proverbs that would serve Paul well as an adult. Paul became deeply immersed in the Rwandan cultu More...

The Rwandan genocide of 1994 happened before the blind eyes of the world. Even as warnings of the impending slaughter circulated widely in the international community, the U.N. stood down and allowed ethnic Hutus to murder their neighbors, ethnic Tutsis and also moderate Hutus. Gangs of militias, the Interahamwe, roamed the country with machetes and hacked to death over 800,000 of their countrymen. As Rusesabagina reflects in his autobiography, the end result was the fastest and most efficient m More...

This book is amazing, and really this is part of history and everyone should at least know what happened during the Rwandan genocide For example, Paul is an ordinary Rwandan man who saves 1,200 lives without him receiving anything in return. One man alone can make a change in the genocide; that’s what Paul Rusesabagina did. He put his life at risk for people he did not know. He took the risk of losing his family for a thousand people he did not know. Paul is left to take care of a hotel during t More...

This book was really good; I think that everyone should read it. It teaches you a life lesson. For example,he main character Paul Rusesabagina risked his life to save over a thousand people durning the Rwandan genocide.This is a life’s lesson because Paul stood up for what he believed in. He felt that killing his neighbors was wrong. He believed that everyone should love one another. Another good reason for reading this book is that it teaches you that you should always stand up for what you bel More...

I have to admit to being an American who knew very little about how the Rwandan genocide had come about, and in fact about the real scope of it. I am considerably more educated after having read this book.

If you've seen the movie Hotel Rwanda, you know the basic outline of how Paul Rusesabagina sheltered approximately 1,200 people in a hotel in Kigali. In the book, he tells how he did it - by calling in favors from people whose acquaintance he'd made as a hotel manager. That doesn't begin to des More...

Edmund Burke said, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

All over Rwanda, good men made their choices. Some joined the tide of evil, succumbing to the collective madness that overcame so many Hutus. Others did nothing. And many good men stood against evil, sheltering Tutsi refugees in their homes or churches, and died for their trouble.

Paul Rusesabagina chose to stand against evil, armed with a stash of good liquor and the proverbial "little black book" -- More...

This movie and book went in a contrary direction. The movie was made and then Paul Rusesabagina wrote the true story. Considering his weapon was words, the book feels like the ‘right’ way for him to tell the tale.

And what a tale it is. This book narrates the build up to the genocide in Rwanda and the seventy six days Paul kept 1 268 people alive and safe in his hotel. The story is told openly and plainly, without drama or exaggeration. And this makes it even more powerful and harrowing than had More...

The book An Ordinary Man is an incredible, inspiring true story that is a MUST READ for everyone. This book is a “must read” because Paul Rusesabagina, the protagonist, is an amazing real-life hero. He saves 2000 people at the hotel Mille Collines just by maintaining and protecting the hotel where he works. It is so inspiring to read about such a humble hero. Furthermore, The book uses Paul’s life as a parallel for Rwandan history. It was a really effective technique that drove the plot forward More...

I couldn’t put this down. After watching Don Cheadle’s brilliant performance of Paul Rusesabagina in Hotel Rwanda, I fervently wanted to read Rusesabagina’s autobiography. This man has so much integrity; he protected 1,268 Rwandan refugees in the Hotel des Mille Collines during a period in which hundreds of thousands were brutally executed, including Hutu political moderates like him. The book begins examining the possible origins of the ethnic divide between the Tutsi and Hutu. The origin of Rw More...

Paul Rusesabagina will be speaking at Lawrence this Monday, so I decided to pick up his Autobiography and read it in preparation, having picked it up when co-author and Lawrence alum Tom Zoellner came to speak here last year.

An Ordinary Man is powerful, touching and quite scary. Rusesabagina focuses almost exclusively on the social and political elements of the genocide. I found this noteworthy because my only previous exposure was in Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Su More...

I don't know much about the Rwandan genocide. This book puts a very human face on the event through the words of Rusesabina, who was the inspiration for Hotel Rwanda. His story is simply amazing. Though he says humbly throughout the book that he was just "an ordinary man," he was one uniquely placed and able to save people because of the relationships he'd built and negotiation skills he'd learned as a hotel manager. He has several near-escapes that make the book impossible to put down.

He also d More...

Pogrom, Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, Holocaust. These are just words for most of us, to be tut-tuted at, and then shrugged and forgotten!

And this is where the strength of this book lies - it makes us feel the horror of neighbor turning on neighbor, husband on wife, friend killing friend, all in the name of righteousness! thru the imagery conjured up by words, and the sheer hard hitting truth of deaths per hour, and how the so called leaders of the free world just sit like ostriches!

The book is su More...

This was definitely a hard book to read, but it's a book that should be read. Paul Rusesabagina writes about how he survived the Rwandan genocide and was able to protect almost 1300 people hiding in his hotel.

If you've seen Hotel Rwanda you know the jist of how things happened. I really enjoyed the details in the book though. There was a lot of history which helped to set up how a genocide could happen. It put things in context. It's pretty shocking to think that friends and neighbors would kill More...

There are few people who can truly say they have saved a life. Even fewer can claim, without an ounce of fabrication, that they have saved over one thousand. Paul Rusesabagina is one such man, far less ordinary than the title of his memoir would let on. During the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Rusesabagina (then the manager of a luxurious hotel) helped keep the 1,000 plus refugees inside safe, just steps away from a bloody genocide occuring outside the front doors. The memoir is written with the cla More...

This memoir is about a self-proclaimed "ordinary man" who utilized his mind, connections and words to save over a thousand people amidst the slaughter that was the 100days genocide in Rwanda (1994). The book not only describes the genocide, but expansively addresses the social relationships of Rwandans, their political history and the importance worldwide apathy played in allowing genocide to ever occur.

A true testament to the power of conviction; Rusesabagina forgives no one their actions, but More...

Paul Rusesabagina became known as the man who hid "1,268 people" (pg. iv) inside the Hotel Mille Collines, in Rwanda's capital city of Kigali, in 1994. The refugees who stayed at Hotel Milles Collines were kept safe because Paul saved up gestures of goodwill as favors combined with the use of what appeared to be protection, luxury, friendly-natured relationships with Hutu leaders to stave off slaughters and other abuses from occurring at the hotel. Outside, "…800,000 people were butchered by the More...

I read this book for a summer school psychology project. As a group, we decided to research and write an analysis on Paul Rusesabagina (This was also the first time I, and some of my other group mates, have heard of him). An Ordinary Man was one of the materials I used to get an insight on his behaviour and interpersonal relationships.

But I won't be summarizing what I've gotten out of An Ordinary Man for my research paper in this review. After all, it has nothing to do with my thoughts on the bo More...

This book details the specific events that occurred around Paul Rusesabagina, the hotel manager for the Mille Collines (otherwise known by pop-culture as "Hotel Rwanda") during the 100 days of genocide in 1994. The Mille Collines became a place of refuge for over a thousand refugees seeking life during the slaughter of hundreds of thousands Tutsi's. Resesabagina eloquently uses his words (which saved the hotel from being a site of massacre) prominently at the beginning of the book and at the end More...

This book is a very well-written account of Rusesabagina's experience as a hotel manager during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. He also explores the historical and sociological context for the events. It blew my mind. It's almost unbelievable to me that so many people could be led to do so many horrible deeds; and yet this book explores how this happened in such a way that it's a bit more within my comprehension how such things happen. I think this is a very important thing to be aware of, given t More...

Wonderful book. I had seen the movie Hotel Rwanda and read some books on the the genocide. Paul Rusesabagina eloquently describes the history of Rwanda, the people, the landscapes, his early life as well his time at the Hotel Diplomat during the genocide. He goes on to tell of his life since that time and spends time at the end musing on the state of man and what leads to genocides and what can prevent them. It's an eloquent book about madness and its antidote. It is not recommended for the sque More...

This is my review on the book “ An ordinary Man “ written by Paul Rusesabagina. The first reason i like this book is, it gives you a real look on what really happened behind the scenes of the media and giving facts that was not shown in the movie “ Hotel Rwanda “. He does this by giving the reader the emotions that everybody felt at that moment. Secondly, he describes abstract nouns to where u can actually picture what it looks like in your mind. By him doing this it made the book more interest More...

The book An Ordinary man is a book that everyone should read! An ordinary man is about, a protagonist in Rwanda that wanted to make a difference by standing up in what he believed in. Its amazing to see how much someone is willing to give for their country. In addition while reading this book, you will see that no matter how hard the situation is u can keep on going by doing what you believe in. When you do whatever it takes to save your loved ones and all those around you, you're a hero. Best o More...