Dana Mashoian Walrath's 'Book of Genocides' Examines Ten Atrocities

Award-winning artist Dana Mashoian Walrath has published The Book of Genocides, a graphic history from Harvard University Press that chronicles ten genocides across five centuries through an interactive visual format. The work draws on Walrath's family history—her grandmother survived the Armenian Genocide by hiding in an urn—and pairs personal narratives with documented histories from the Americas, Australia, Armenia, the Holocaust, Palestine, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and the Rohingya crisis.

Walrath, a writer, anthropologist, and MacDowell Fellow, traveled to each location to document how communities live with these legacies. Each chapter combines historical context with "turn-the-flap" sequences exploring how dehumanization enables genocide, then restores victims' humanity through page design. The book aims to expose systems enabling violence and promote recognition of shared humanity.