The project's first and central product was a 400-page book, The Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know, published by W.W. Norton in the Spring of 1999. The book, whose full text will soon be available on this site, is literally designed as an A to Z guide to war crimes, and formatted as both a reference book for individuals in the field and as a visual and vivid source book for a wide variety of audiences, including the general reader. Crimes of War contains 140 original articles by some 90 journalists, jurists and scholars, as well as photographs which graphically underscore the authors' words.

The book came about from the experiences of a handful of individuals whose professions took them to contemporary war zones in Bosnia, Africa, the Middle East and other "hot spots" where they were witnesses to the changing nature of war and the deprivations, indignities, and casualties imposed on civilians by regular armies, irregular militias, and guerillas. (In the first World War, perhaps ten per cent of all casualties were civilian; seventy years later, that figure has reached a staggering ninety per cent.) Fifty years after the Nuremberg Tribunals of Nazi war criminals and the adoption of the Geneva Conventions, and decades after the passage of a series of human rights treaties, governments are still reluctant to demand or facilitate accountability for even the grossest violations of international law (i.e. genocide, ethnic cleansing, rape or torture).

Crimes of War was edited by Roy Gutman, Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for Newsday, and essayist David Rieff. It includes a foreword by Justice Richard Goldstone and an introductory essay by Lawrence Weschler that gives an overview of the development of humanitarian law. Crimes of War is unique in its approach and execution, filling a gap that has existed for too long.

Times Online Review (Crimes of War 2.0)

In its first edition, published in 1999, this book was an importantly useful compendium, alphabetically and with coolly angry dispassion detailing almost everything one wishes one did not need to know about the atrocities and crimes committed in the course of human conflict.

In this second edition, Crimes of War 2.0: What the Public Should Know, it is an even more important and useful handbook, updated and revised for an even gloomier and more dispiriting world. In the introduction to the first edition, Roy Gutman and David Rieff decried Nato's feeble response to the crises in Croatia and Bosnia, and its inability to deal with one minor dictator, Slobodan Milosevic, despite having just faced down the mighty Soviet empire in 40 years of Cold War. But they could also strike an optimistic note, by stating a hope that regimes of humanitarian law were slowly and incrementally offering opportunities for improvement.

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FindLaw Review (Crimes of War 2.0)

"It's War!" shouts the giant Los Angeles Times headline reprinted in the new edition of Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know. The book, published this month, is a normative response to the newspaper's call: It enumerates and analyzes the manifold legal issues raised by war.

What is the responsibility of military commanders for crimes committed by their subordinates? When does the killing of civilians constitute collateral damage -- regrettable if not illegal -- and when it is a war crime? What do the Geneva Conventions say about terrorism? These are among the questions that Crimes of War addresses.

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Intel Dump Blog Review (Crimes of War 2.0)

This tome is the second version of a popular encylopedia first published in 1999, covering array of topics at the nexus of law and war. The editors bring in an amazing cast of contributors for this volume, including Dana Priest (detention and interrogation), Jess Bravin (Guantanamo), P.W. Singer (private military firms), M. Cherif Bassiouni (crimes against humanity), and George Packer (the occupation of Iraq). As an Army officer, law student and lawyer, I found this to be an invaluable primer for the issues I care deeply about, and an excellent companion to the New York Times and Washington Post, where writers often don't have the space to fully treat the issues which arise out of the events they report on. A great deal has changed in the 8 years since the first edition of Crimes of War, and I am grateful that the editors chose to put together a second edition.

Le Monde Book Review
A collection edited by journalists and lawyers, this great work should become the favored book of all activists fighting against indifference.

Do wars without war crimes exist? Can we lessen the brutality of battles in which civilians account for more than 90% of the casualties? That is the goal of this book; a book fighting against massacres, essential for the honest person and activist, and an invaluable document for the student or researcher in geopolitical studies. Black from the dried blood of all the massacres of the past century, red from the blood still being shed today, in Chechenya in particular: the cover of this book reflects its contents.

A reference book of massacres, Crimes of War, seeks to be seen. A necessary reminder of the Geneva Conventions, this book will serve as a key resource for petitioners, intellectuals, signatories of manifestos, and for all those who fight so that far away massacres will not be too quickly forgotten by society's short memory.

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The Boston Book Review
"...this book is based on the optimistic premise that the first step towards achieving justice and accountability is the public's understanding of the 'moral and legal benchmarks' contained in the laws governing war."

Evening Standard
"The shaming thing for anyone who has covered conflicts is the immediate and crucial knowledge gaps that Crimes of War reveals. Few of us who toured through the Balkans this spring and summer, bandying about phrases like "crimes against humanity", had any real idea of their exact legal definition."

The Guardian (London)
"Crimes of War was edited by Roy Gutman and David Rieff, two American journalists who were radicalised by the horrors they witnessed in Bosnia. It is a riveting mixture of reporters’ accounts of war crimes in every continent, coupled with essays by lawyers on international humanitarian law. The authors’ original motive was to educate those whose professional life includes war into understanding that what they see or hear about while doing their normal duties may not just be a crime – arson, rape, looting, murder—but a war crime. In the spirit of the new globalised international conscience, the aim is for witnesses to realise that these war crimes can be tried in international courts. Instead of just writing their reports, shaking their heads, and moving on, they should help the prosecution."

The Independent (London)
"journalists witnessed and reported numerous war crimes without the slightest expectation on the part of reporter or perpetrator that anyone would ever be brought to justice. Crimes of War says that this is all beginning to change. Now it doesn’t seem so improbable that Karadzic and even the Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic, may have to face an international war crimes tribunal."

International Legal Practitioner
"When collated, despatches and war photography can often have an unpleasantly iconic and voyeuristic quality, but here they are placed squarely in context, and serve as a reminder of the invaluable role that journalists now play in monitoring such international norms as may be said to exist."

Kirkus Reviews
"The book both informs and appalls, and it is meant to. ...this is a work of singular importance."

Neiman Reports
"As the bloodiest century in history comes to a close, it is imperative that the promise of the Geneva Conventions be fulfilled. To do so we need a better understanding of modern war crimes and a stronger commitment to the evolving strategy of addressing them. "Crimes of War" is a solid contribution to the former and provocative inspiration to the latter."

New Law Journal (UK)
"By enlisting a large number of distinguished journalists, lawyers and politicians to examine over 1000 topics in a 1000 words or so, what has been produced is a kind of miniature encyclopedia of war, but written very much from a humanitarian and reformist perspective."

The San Francisco Chronicle
"It would be hard to imagine a more illustrious group of war correspondents than the contributors to Crimes of War, a sturdy, informative handbook focusing on international humanitarian law and the ways it is breached during violent conflicts."

Sunday Record
"There are 140 articles on everything from acts of war to genocide to child soldiers to refugees. They’re written in clear, readable style by 90 journalists, legal experts, and historians, most of whom are well-versed in covering conflicts…. The result is a book that upsets and disturbs as much as it enlightens and educates."

The Times Higher Education Supplement
"Editors Gutman and Rieff have produced an important book. It is accessible to the ordinary reader and turns difficult international legal concepts into digestible articles. Importantly, the analysis is as objective as is possible in a field so full of passion and outrage. The text remains cool, while the black and white photographs drive home the horrors of war crimes. It is a book that should be available to ordinary soldiers during training."

Times Literary Supplement
"The quality of the contributors makes this a reliable enterprise, but it cannot be a reassuring one. The book would not have been conceived if the laws of war were well observed and human rights in time of war decently respected. The dreadful fact is that our end-of-the-century conflicts produce conduct as bad as anything known to history; and very little of it ever gets brought to the bar of justice…As constant a theme in these pages as the familiarity and ubiquity of criminal conduct is an insistence that war criminality can be identified and testified to."

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