The 20th Century was perhaps the most brutal of mankind's history. I hope we never see re-runs of the likes of Mao Zedong, Josef Stalin, Adolph Hitler, and Pol Pot.
Thirty years ago, I would have said that the many books documenting various aspects of the brutality of Adolph Hitler would have made a repeat of his crimes unthinkable. Today, I'm not so sure, as such literature is less widely read and anti-Semitism seems to be coming in fashion again.
The horrific crimes of Mao and Stalin are also becoming more and more documented, but most in US society don't read such books. This is sad, as Stalin's brutality far exceeded that of Adolph Hitler, and Mao's brutality dwarfed Stalin's. For those interested in such matters, here are several books well worth reading:
The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn;
Mao: The Untold Story by Jung Chang an Jon Halliday
The Black Book of Communism by Stephane Courtois, et al
These aren't light reading, but if we don't want a re-run of these monsters, they are worth reading.
