David Rieff Libri

Now back in print for the first time since 1969, a stunning novel about childhood, marriage, and divorce by one of the most interesting minds of the twentieth century. Dream and reality overlap in Divorcing, a book in which divorce is not just a question of a broken marriage but names a rift that runs right through the inner and outer worlds of Sophie Blind, its brilliant but desperate protagonist. Can the rift be mended? Perhaps in the form of a novel, one that goes back from present-day New York to Sophie’s childhood in pre–World War II Budapest, that revisits the divorce between her Freudian father and her fickle mother, and finds a place for a host of further tensions and contradictions in her present life. The question that haunts Divorcing, however, is whether any novel can be fleet and bitter and true and light enough to gather up all the darkness of a given life. Susan Taubes’s startlingly original novel was published in 1969 but largely ignored at the time; after the author’s tragic early death, it was forgotten. Its republication presents a chance to discover a splintered, glancing, caustic, and lyrical work by a dazzlingly intense and inventive writer.

Timely and controversial, A Bed for the Night reveals how humanitarian organizations trying to bring relief in an ever more violent and dangerous world are often betrayed and misused, and have increasingly lost sight of their purpose.

Focusing on the moral and diplomatic failures of Western powers during the Bosnia war, the book provides a harrowing account of genocide against Bosnian Muslims. David Rieff critiques the inaction of the United States, Western Europe, and the United Nations, framing the conflict as emblematic of the post-Cold War era's confusion. He argues that the lack of intervention not only allowed ethnic fascism to resurface in Europe but also marked a catastrophic moment in international relations, akin to the Vietnam War for the U.S.

Presents an account of Susan Sontag's final months, written by her son and drawing on previously unpublished letters and journals. This book writes about being by her side during that last year and at her death, and about the author's own contradictory emotions: his guilt for not consoling her enough.

Focusing on the challenges faced by humanitarian organizations, the book highlights the disconnect between their original mission of neutrality and their current advocacy for intervention in conflicts. Through firsthand accounts from war zones, David Rieff illustrates how this shift jeopardizes their access to victims and allows major powers to influence their actions. He argues that to effectively alleviate suffering, these organizations must reclaim their independence and return to their foundational principles.

Through firsthand accounts from conflict zones like the Balkans, Africa, the Middle East, and Afghanistan, the author critically examines Western and UN military interventions aimed at promoting human rights and democracy. This collection of articles reflects on the complexities and unintended consequences of such actions, leading to a nuanced argument against armed intervention except in the most dire circumstances. Rieff's insights challenge prevailing assumptions and prompt a reevaluation of the efficacy of military solutions to humanitarian crises.

Provocatively argues that the business of remembrance, particularly of the great tragedies of the past, are policitised events of highly selective memory. Rather than ending injustices, as we expect it to, collective memory in so many cases dooms us to an endless cycle of vengeance.

Why have we failed so badly to address the crisis of hunger in the 21st century?

A leading contrarian thinker explores the ethical paradox at the heart of history's woundsThe conventional wisdom about historical memory is summed up in George Santayana’s celebrated phrase, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Today, the consensus that it is moral to remember, immoral to forget, is nearly absolute. And yet is this right?David Rieff, an independent writer who has reported on bloody conflicts in Africa, the Balkans, and Central Asia, insists that things are not so simple. He poses hard questions about whether remembrance ever truly has, or indeed ever could, “inoculate” the present against repeating the crimes of the past. He argues that rubbing raw historical wounds—whether self-inflicted or imposed by outside forces—neither remedies injustice nor confers reconciliation. If he is right, then historical memory is not a moral imperative but rather a moral option—sometimes called for, sometimes not. Collective remembrance can be toxic. Sometimes, Rieff concludes, it may be more moral to forget. Ranging widely across some of the defining conflicts of modern times—the Irish Troubles and the Easter Uprising of 1916, the white settlement of Australia, the American Civil War, the Balkan wars, the Holocaust, and 9/11—Rieff presents a pellucid examination of the uses and abuses of historical memory. His contentious, brilliant, and elegant essay is an indispensable work of moral philosophy.