Written by a range of scholars, pundits, activists and political leaders from around the world, these essays address the question of whether compensation for an historical wrong is dangerous "blood money" which allows a nation to wash its hands for ever of its responsibility to those it has injured. Why does the USA offer $20,000 atonement money to Japanese Americans relocated to concentration camps during World War II, while not even apologizing to African Americans for 250 years of human bondage and another century of institutionalized discrimination? How can the US and Canada best grapple with the genocidal campaigns against American Indians on which their countries were founded? How should Japan make amends to Korean "comfort women" who were sexually enslaved during World War II? Why does South Africa deem it necessary to grant amnesty to whites who tortured and murdered blacks under apartheid? Is Germany's highly praised redress programme, which has paid vast sums of money to Jews world-wide, a success and an example for others?
These are among the topics discussed by the book's contributors, whose essays incorporate the voices of victims of some of the world's worst atrocities.