Inside America's Concentration Camps: Two Centuries of Internment and Torture

While most Americans are familiar with the history of Japanese internment camps during WWII, few know the extent of America's racially-motivated internment. Dickerson seeks to offer readers a comprehensive history of American concentration camps and internment facilities but, while the book purports to cover two centuries of internment and abuse, it really only investigates WWII and the Trail of Tears. Dickerson highlights American abuse against native populations, and touches upon wartime internment not just of Japanese, but also of Jews, Italians, and Germans. His research includes a great number of heartbreaking stories; from Jewish immigrants who escaped the Nazis only to end up in American camps thanks to the low wartime immigration quotas, to Japanese orphans living on subsistence rations, these personal tales throw a vague chapter of the historical record into sharp relief. With economy and insight, Dickerson presents yesterday as a lesson for today and takes a close look at Guantanamo Bay and modern race relations between America and the Arab world. Readers unfamiliar with this history will likely be moved. (Aug.)