Uncovering the Truth: A Forensic Anthropologist's Journey Through the Mass Graves of Rwanda in The Bone Woman

Georgia Barnes: This book is good for grasping what it's like to uncover mass graves resulting from genocide and war. This book was used in my graduate course for Forensic Anthropology but I would have read it in leisure as well!

United States on Dec 15, 2019

Caroline rodd: The author shows passion for her work, and goes into amazing detail about her field work. If you are into forensic anthropogly this is definitely a fun read.

Canada on Jun 13, 2018

Kai: great book
she went into details about her own experience of working in Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo. Her own struggle was very real

Canada on Sep 01, 2017

phansuu: I can't imagine so such a young person, in this case, Clea Koff could professionnally embrace and thrive on a "unglamorous" forensic anthopologist career. Her descriptions, "saw-off", brushing...of the human bones through decomposed bodies to obtain evidence, to convey to authorities the alleged perpetrators showed me how much love she has for the human kind in general and for the families'survivors in particular. Clea, though encountered a handful of all kinds of "difficulties" with her work sites, her colleagues and certainly with herself, came out on top achieving her goals. Sacrificing herself by getting out of her comfort zone, the USA, at 23 years of age to seek justice for the defenseless and to bring hope to all of us that even the dead deserve a commanding voice. "Truth does not bring back the death. Truth allows their voices to be heard."

United States on May 03, 2017

Amazon Customer: good book

United Kingdom on Feb 26, 2016

tilkat3: Gruelling account of Clea's time in Rwanda, but does not sensationalize what happened there. An excellent book

United Kingdom on Aug 21, 2015

EpicFehlReader: Though this was published in 2004, this memoir looks back at Koff's work as a budding forensic anthropologist going out on her first major assignments in the mid to late 90s (the last bit of the book ends around 2000) and how these first jobs affected and molded her not only professionally, but as a person. I personally found this memoir fascinating. Not only is the work she does grim but interesting, but Koff herself comes from a unique background -- born in England, Koff comes from an American father with Polish-Russian heritage and an English-raised Tansanian mother (with 1/2 her family being from Uganda). As Koff puts it, "instead of national identity, we had strong family identity." This background influences Koff some emotionally when she takes her first job working for the UN to investigate mass graves of victims of the genocide in Rwanda. She quickly learns that many of the victims came from multiple backgrounds within one family tree and were often killed for it during the months of the genocide.

Koff first visits the mass graves in Rwanda in 1994, and again in 1996. Through her investigations and information that became available in the months and years after the...

United States on Mar 19, 2015

Bernard Maftei: very nice!

Canada on Oct 17, 2014

S. Cunningham: I was surprised to read such negative reviews for a book that I dearly love and have bought twice (after one copy was loaned and not returned). Maybe it's just an anthropology thing. As an anthro grad student who wants to work in the same types of situation that Ms. Koff describes, her book gives insight into her experiences.

This is not a technical book, in fact it reads more like a memoir. So don't expect detailed excavation information, that's not what this book is. And Ms. Koff is young when she goes on these digs (she is just out of her bachelors when she travels to Rwanda). For those who may not know anything about anthropology, this is a big deal. People without a masters degree or with little field experience aren't usually part of these recovery efforts. Ms. Koff was lucky and competent enough to have worked with good professors who had connections and helped her to get on the UN mission. This is not to say she isn't a good scientist, she is, but as many in the field (and in life) know, half the battle is knowing the right person.

Some people seemed to want to see some strong emotional responses by Ms. Koff, and I can understand for most people excavating a...

United States on Jan 16, 2010

Federico (Fred) Moramarco: It's simply hard to believe that Clea Koff was only 23 years old when she experienced some of the things she describes in this remarkable book. Ms. Koff is a forensic anthropologist who exhumed mass graves in Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo and elsewhere in the 1990s, and kept a meticulous journal of her activities. She's converted that journal to lucid and poetic prose that confronts mortality squarely and underscores the extraordinary inhumanity that human beings are capable of. She writes about the grisliest details with grace, luminosity, accuracy, and even lyricism. This is a must read and I can't recommend it too highly. It's one of those books that can change your life.

United States on May 10, 2004