Reviews tagging 'Murder'

The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II by Iris Chang

73 reviews

audreysaurusrex's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.5

This book is absolutely worthwhile and excellently framed/organized, relying on primary sources from Chinese, Japanese, and European/American voices. HOWEVER, make sure you read/listen to it in a safe place because as you can imagine it is very emotionally challenging.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Violence, Blood, Grief, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, and War

Moderate: Suicide and Torture

Minor: Incest, Miscarriage, and Kidnapping

bringlaurasnacks's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

What can you even say about this book? It was horrifying, but I could not stop reading. This account of the real events of the Japanese atrocities in Nanking and by extension the rest of China during WWII will haunt you. It is a further crime against humanity how unaware the general public is of these events.

Beyond the historical accounts I found the second half of this book nearly as troubling as the first. I could not help but draw parallels between Japan's attempt to censor and minimize their own crimes (can we just call this genocide?) in texts and their education system to the current attempt to purge black history from the American school systems. This is an absolutely necessary read for every citizen of the world. "As Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel warned years ago, to forget a holocaust is to kill twice."

"Apparently some quirk in human nature allows even the most unspeakable acts of evil to become banal within minutes, provided only that they occur far enough away to pose. O personal threat." -Iris Chang

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Child death, Death, Genocide, Hate crime, Rape, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Trafficking, Murder, Colonisation, and War

hollyoparker's review against another edition

challenging dark informative tense fast-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Murder, and War

nina_rae_131's review against another edition

challenging dark informative medium-paced

5.0

Not for the faint of heart. It was very difficult to read, but I’m glad I did. It was very informative and well structured. 
I believe it’s still relevant today: 
“And there is yet a third lesson to be learned, one that is perhaps the most distressing of all. It lies in the frightening ease with which the mind can accept genocide, turning us all into passive spectators to the unthinkable. The Rape of Nanking was front-page news across the world, and yet most of the world stood by and did nothing while an entire city was butchered.” p221

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Genocide, Rape, Sexual violence, Torture, Police brutality, Murder, Colonisation, and War

Moderate: Slavery, Medical content, and Trafficking

Minor: Drug use and Suicide

purplepickle's review against another edition

challenging dark informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

This is an incredibly well written and researched book. I felt physically ill many times throughout the book, and I struggled to push through all the chapters. Anyone who is interested in history must read this book, as it is unfortunately a very much forgotten chapter of human history. I'm glad to be infinitely more educated on this event then I was previously. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Drug use, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Incest, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Medical content, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Grief, Religious bigotry, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Colonisation, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, and Suicide attempt

Minor: Mental illness, Cannibalism, and Abandonment

eheidenreich's review against another edition

dark informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

"Apparently some quirk in human nature allows even the most unspeakable acts of evil to become banal within minutes, provided they occur far enough away to pose no personal threat." 

Over 20 years after Chang wrote that statement & it is still applicable to the state of the world, if not more so. Where we can see the daily personal accounts of Palestinians experiencing a genocide and those in power have done nothing tangible to stop it. While reading the sections regarding the coverup and propaganda used to quell the outrage around the massacre, I couldn't help but continually draw parallels to current events. It is incredibly disappointing to be reminded that history has and will continue to repeat itself.

Well written documentation on atrocities that many governments seem keen to forget/suppress. I gave this 4.5 stars because I felt some of the organization of events in the beginning was hard to follow. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Genocide, Gore, Rape, Sexual violence, Torture, Murder, and Fire/Fire injury

Moderate: Racism, Kidnapping, and War

Minor: Drug use, Incest, Suicide, and Cannibalism

jasisreading's review against another edition

Soft DNF

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Murder, War, and Injury/Injury detail

thewallner's review against another edition

challenging informative fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Genocide, Mental illness, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Suicide, Torture, Xenophobia, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and War

readerofdafuk's review against another edition

dark sad tense medium-paced

4.5

Jesus Christ this is some dark shit

I knew it was bad but Holy Shit 
Did well to explain the mentality of why it happened but man this was a brutal read

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual harassment, and War

dmathuna's review against another edition

challenging dark informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

I don’t even know what to say about a book that covers such topics. I’ll start by saying that it’s short enough at around 230 pages and aims to give an overview of such a wide ranging event that it can’t seriously detail much but what is told in here is extremely harrowing to read and then to comprehend that these acts were all done by humans to other humans. 

The sheer barbarity and brutality shown to the Chinese inhabitants of Nanjing  is staggering and each page you uncover a new horror you previously thought incomprehensible. The detailing of how widespread the systematic rape of all women regardless of age, pregnancy, occupation churned my stomach in a way I don’t think has ever happened to me. I am absolutely forever changed by the contents of this book and it will never leave me for the rest of my life..

The fact that elements of Japanese society still can’t accept that this event occurred much less that their soldiers carried it out with explicit knowledge by their government leaders is tragic and should be a crime akin to denial of the holocaust. I can only hope that since the time the book was published that attitudes there have started to change. More than 300,000 people were murdered by the occupation and we did them a disservice by not remembering this event more. 

At the time of me writing this review Iris Chang would have been 56.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Genocide, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Violence, Xenophobia, Mass/school shootings, Murder, Colonisation, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Fire/Fire injury

Minor: Miscarriage