Manoa Language and Culture Programs Receive $8 MillionAsian and Pacific Language Programs funded. Read more
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Extremists and Cultural Destruction
Manoa Associate Professor Rebecca Knuth publishes Burning Books and Leveling Libraries: Extremist Violence and Cultural Destruction.
Whether the product of passion or of a cool-headed decision to use ideas to rationalize excess, the decimation of the world's libraries occurred throughout the 20th century, and there is no end in sight. Cultural destruction is of increasing concern.
In her previous book Libricide, Knuth focused on book destruction by authoritarian regimes: Nazis, Serbs in Bosnia, Iraqis in Kuwait, Maoists during the Cultural Revolution in China, and the Chinese Communists in Tibet. But authoritarian governments are not the only perpetrators. Extremists of all stripes—through terrorism, war, ethnic cleansing, genocide and other forms of mass violence—are also responsible for widespread cultural destruction, as she demonstrates in this new book.
Burning Books and Leveling Libraries: Extremist Violence and Cultural Destruction is available from the publisher’s website.