Listen to a short interview with James Dawes Host: Chris Gondek ] Producer: Heron & Crane

After the worst thing in the world happens, then what? What is left to the survivors, the witnesses, those who tried to help? What can we do to prevent more atrocities from happening in the future, and to stop the ones that are happening right now? "That the World May Know" tells the powerful and moving story of the successes and failures of the modern human rights movement. Drawing on firsthand accounts from fieldworkers around the world, the book gives a painfully clear picture of the human cost of confronting inhumanity in our day.

There is no dearth of such stories to tell, and James Dawes begins with those that emerged from the Rwandan genocide. Who, he asks, has the right to speak for the survivors and the dead, and how far does that right go? How are these stories used, and what does this tell us about our collective moral future? His inquiry takes us to a range of crises met by a broad array of human rights and humanitarian organizations. Here we see from inside the terrible stresses of human rights work, along with its curious seductions, and the myriad paradoxes and quandaries it presents.

With pathos, compassion, and a rare literary grace, this book interweaves personal stories, intellectual and political questions, art and aesthetics, and actual "news" to give us a compelling picture of humanity at its conflicted best, face-to-face with humanity at its worst.

Barry Oshry has a lifetime's experience of working with social and organizational systems. Here he explains how we can understand - and avoid - the "catastrophes" that continue to occur when one culture meets another - when demagogues sell us messages of superiority or purity in the face of cultural difference. Algeria Armenia Bosnia Cambodia Congo Darfur East Timor The Holdomor The Holocaust Myanmar Palestine Rwanda... He explains how the two conventional solutions to encountering the "other" - Purity and Tolerance - both exact a terrible cost on the oppressed while diminishing the humanity of the oppressors. And he offers us a third possibility, one that requires a fundamental transformation in how we see and experience one another. This transformation requires us to understand that the interaction patterns we fall into shape the way we see and experience one another. Change the pattern of interaction and our experiences of one another will change... The possibility of "Power and Love", working together and tempering one another, will emerge.