Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War and Death by Susan D. Moeller, Routledge, 1999.  Moeller discusses how sensational news coverage has dulled public sensitivity to global disasters and crises.

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. This is the story of a 12-year-old boy carried away by Sierra Leone’s civil war, his experiences after his recruitment for the national army, and his “repatriation” into society at age 17.

A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power, Basic Books, 2002. Power presents a case that, over the decades, even a small contribution by the U.S. government could have prevented much of the atrocity committed in Bosnia, Rwanda, and many other countries.

Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness by Tracy Kidder, Random House, 2009. This is the true story of Deo, a medical student fleeing the genocide in Burundi for the hope of a new life in New York.

What is the What by Dave Eggers, Vintage Books, 2006. This is the fictionalized memoir of Valentino Achak Deng, a Sudanese civil war refugee searching for a new life in America.