He begins with his ear­li­est mem­o­ries, grow­ing up on a Pol­ish farm in the ear­ly 1900s, where a tree might be so large, five or six chil­dren had to join hands to cir­cle its trunk. We fol­low Lemkin to towns where he begins for­mal school­ing and employ­ment, cer­tain — as he could not have been — that cat­a­stro­phe is immi­nent. When the Nazis infest Poland, Lemkin escapes a trans­port of Jews from War­saw and makes an extra­or­di­nary, most­ly noc­tur­nal trek across the forests and vil­lages of Poland, just to see his par­ents one last time. While his free­dom — his life — often hangs by a thread, it’s Lemkin’s obser­va­tions of peo­ple and places en route that com­mand atten­tion. After a tear­ful farewell with his fam­i­ly, Lemkin becomes a full-fledged refugee, trav­el­ing from one tem­po­rary safe zone to the next, through Europe to Swe­den, then across the Sovi­et Union to Japan before arriv­ing in America. 

After reach­ing Amer­i­ca the nar­ra­tive switch­es gears, as Lemkin recounts his strug­gles to con­vince strate­gic diplo­mats to ral­ly to the anti-geno­cide cause. Since Lemkin nev­er lived to fin­ish or edit this nar­ra­tive, it sim­ply ends as he did, semi-des­ti­tute but deter­mined to see his cause to fruition. For human rights schol­ars, this is an essen­tial pur­chase, although Lemkin has strange appeal even for the gen­er­al read­er. Appen­dix­es, bib­li­og­ra­phy, index, intro­duc­tion, notes.