To the House of Collateral Damage: Centuries of the Civilian Dead: 0 - Softcover

More civilians have been killed in the last century in mass conflicts than have been killed in all the wars of the previous four centuries combined. To the House of Collateral Damage: Centuries of the Civilian Dead invokes the never-ending horror of war and addresses our relationship to it. The poem's central achievement is that it bears witness to the harshness and brutality of our age while at the same time providing an eloquent memorial for its too-often forgotten noncombatant victims.
From the Inquisition, to the "Trail of Tears," to the Armenian genocide, to Hiroshima, to the Korean War, to the war in Vietnam, to the Arab-Israeli conflict, to September 11th, the poem is epic in its scope yet intimate in its telling. William La Riche exposes our most shameful deeds in a balanced voice, forcing us to abandon our aesthetic distance and replace it with undiscriminating empathy.

WILLIAM LA RICHE was a Fulbright Scholar and has lectured at New York University and Princeton University in art and architecture over the years. His previous book Alexandria: The Sunken City is about the largest underwater excavation of all time. He lives in New York City.

William La Riche is the author of Alexandria: The Sunken City about the largest underwater excavation of all time. He teaches Art and Architecture at NYU.