A globe-trotting journalist's harrowing rundown on the horrific
toll taken by land mines long after the wars during which they were
laid have ended. Drawing largely on his own experiences in Angola,
Winslow provides both big-picture perspectives and anecdotal
evidence on this ghastly threat afflicting much of the Third World.
All told, roughly 110 million mines (anti-tank and anti-personnel)
remain buried in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Egypt, Israel, Korea,
Mozambique, Somalia, Vietnam, and scores of other countries. Every
year, these devices kill or maim 26,000 people, virtually all of
them civilians. Worse yet, the lethal legacy continues to grow;
guerilla forces are laying one million new mines each year,
according to UN estimates. Thanks to their capacity to channel and
contain enemy troops in combat zones at a comparatively modest
cost, land mines have become weapons of choice for regular and
insurgent armies. But as the author explains in his reportage on
clearance crews dispatched by humanitarian organizations, it's a
lot easier and cheaper to put sensitive packages of explosives
below the surface of the ground than it is to remove or disarm
them. Nor, as he documents in bleak detail, are the doctors and
nurses posted to battlegrounds by private relief agencies able to
do much more than perform basic amputations for those who survive a
land-mine blast. Covered as well is the indifference of corrupt
governments to the plight of innocents crippled or dismembered by
accidental detonations, the dearth of crutches (let alone
prosthetics) in areas where the need is desperate, the chilling
effect of live minefields on once-bustling population centers, and
the emergent Canadian-led campaign to ban the use of land mines. An
eloquent case against ordnance that was characterized by no less an
authority than William Tecumseh Sherman as "not war, but murder."
(Kirkus Reviews)
"Gives the statistics a painfully human face."
--The Washington Post Book World
Philip Winslow offers the most complete and compelling book on land mines--the issue brought to world attention with the awarding of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize to the Campaign to Ban Land Mines. He draws on his years as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, the Balkans, and Africa, and journeys into rural Angola, where he introduces us to the victims, the deminers, and the way land mines destroy economies and infrastructures. He also writes about the Campaign to Ban Land Mines and the ways we might finally pull the "dragon's teeth" from the earth, to restore it to those who live there.
"Winslow's fine book puts names and faces to the victims and begs us to beware. Only such harrowing testimony and eloquent pleading will rid us of this scourge."
--William F. Schulz, executive director, Amnesty International
"Winslow's moving and powerful book shows why some weapons are so insidious that they do not belong in the arsenals of civilized nations. A land mine is such a weapon. It should be banished from the earth."
--U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy
"Makes a strong case that such a ban--championed by the late Princess Diana--is a necessity."
--Boston Herald
"A thoughtful, sometimes harrowing portrait."
--Utne Reader
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