No More Killing Fields: Preventing Deadly Conflict, David A. Hamburg,
Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2004, pp. v, 365David Hamburg, a physician, scholar, and policymaker, came to think preventively in the 1950s, when he saw the impact of the first polio vaccine. He built on this experience later when, as president of the
Carnegie Corporation of New York (1982-1997), he became interested in
preventing mass violence—“the prime problem of the
twenty-first century” (vii). One of the most important questions he
poses in this work is whether it is “beyond human capacity to create
secure and decent living standards for people everywhere and to foster
just interactions among diverse peoples” (1). Hamburg believes that
an evolving worldwide awareness of unprecedented dangers and of equally
unprecedented advances in science and technology can help humanity
transcend “the ancient habits of blaming, dehumanizing, repressing,
and attacking …” (5).
