... 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.

Gretton is doing something more generous and more complex than simply chronicling the noxious anonymity of desk-killers—more generous, more complex, and therefore necessarily more daring, more open to looking either distracted or self-indulgent or both.

Gretton’s is manifestly not a conventional history.

Gretton, an activist and educator, takes a deeply personal approach to this book. This is in clear contrast to the ways that the mass murderers he writes about use abstract language to dehumanize their victims. Gretton's autobiographical asides are often lengthy digressions, but they have the effect of making him an empathetic guide through difficult histories.

... sprawling and meditative.

A massively detailed account of the good bureaucrats who follow orders and thereby kill millions.