Eric D. Weitz (1953–2021) was Distinguished Professor of History at City College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He was also the author of A World Divided: The Global Struggle for Human Rights in the Age of Nation-States; Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy, which was named a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice; and Creating German Communism, 1890–1990: From Popular Protests to Socialist State (all Princeton).

"Weitz does an admirable job . . . of providing a useful introduction to four of the most widely known genocides of the twentieth century."---Paul Nienkamp, MCU Journal --- "This important, highly thoughtful book is a welcome addition to the growing literature on genocide in the twentieth century. It deserves a wide audience among scholars, undergraduates, and policy makers. Broad ranging, genuinely comparative, rigorous, and learned, A Century of Genocide is engagingly written, while prudent and balanced in its judgments."---Frank Chalk, Slavic Review --- "Weitz makes a persuasive case that these genocides were not simply anarchic eruptions of age-old hatreds, but rather were engineered by crisis-ridden regimes promoting utopian visions requiring a radical refashioning of the population."---Martin Farrell, Perspectives on Politics --- "An important, thought-provoking book on an inordinately complex subject."---Gavriel Rosenfeld, New Leader --- "Weitz has produced something exceedingly rare: a scholarly book one cannot put down. This is a meritorious, thoughtful book." --- "[A] book that must be read and that must be argued over. Without an understanding of the issues [it] tackle[s] with passion and in depth, the desire to intervene--to prevent ethnic cleansing or genocide--is meaningless."---Rima Berns-McGown, International Journal --- "A Century of Genocide has much to offer. It will serve as an excellent first introduction to Lenin and Stalin's crimes, the Holocaust, the Cambodian massacres of the 1970s and the ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia."---Brendon Simms, Times Higher Education Supplement --- "There is much new in Weitz's analysis and his isolation of the common mechanisms of state-sponsored genocide is an invaluable contribution to the literature on the subject. . . . Despite its analytical and reasoned approach, this work cannot be read without feeling outrage, despair and horror. Weitz's work raises profound questions about the human capacity for violence." --- "One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2003"