from back cover: "In this startling essay, Jean-Paul Sartre concludes that the United States is practicing genocide in Vietnam. Using the standards of international law, the practices of Hitler and others, the statements of high-ranking Americans, and the testimony of American soldiers, Sartre demonstrates our intention to make the war in Vietnam an example to all the world of the consequences of a revolution we do not approve. We are killing Vietnamese, he asserts, not because they are soldiers fighting our soldiers, not because they are the 'enemy' of 'conventional' wars, but because the death of any Vietnamese is a part of our demonstration of worldwide power, of warning to others. Are these the politics of domination, of genocide?

"There is no reason why Americans should applaud Sartre's cogent, painful essay, but there is every reason why Americans should be aware of his thinking. The 'crime of silence' is one every citizen of this powerful nation must guard against.

On Genocide was written at the end of the second session of the International War Crimes Tribunal and the text was adopted by the Tribunal as part of its findings and judgments. Because the national press in the United States chose not to fully report the investigations of the Tribunal, established at the suggestion of Bertrand Russell, Arlette El Kaim-Sartre, Sartre's adopted daughter, has written a lengthy introduction to her father's essay summarizing both the evidence and the judgments of the Tribunal."