Menu
I You We Them: Volume 1: Walking into the World of the Desk Killer
Next in the queue
61
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
26/100Critics
96/100Scholars
Author:
Dan Gretton
Publisher:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Date:
July 21, 2020
A British activist and writer delves into the phenomenon of "desk killers," the bureaucrats whose safely distant and sterile work enables genocide and other atrocities. Interspersed with historical details about the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity, Gretton offers meditations on his personal life and on-the-ground research.
What The Reviewers Say
... it is much more than a history of bureaucratic crime. Rather, Gretton has written himself deeply and intimately into the work, which also serves as a poignant memoir; a travelogue that leads the reader through time and space, history and memory; and an extended exercise in observation and introspection.
... an insightful and somewhat terrifying look into the corporate engines behind several of the most significant atrocities of the 20th century.
... a complex and exceptional book.
The book is a journey in multiple respects: through landscapes and cityscapes to reimagine sites of terror or tumult; an immersion into human nature, including the mutation of memory; and of self-discovery. The jumbled but extraordinary result leads to an understanding of harrowing, often hidden histories, and a reframing of how we think about the past.
