The Devil's Gardens: The Story of Landmines - Softcover

Monin, Lydia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0712668594 ISBN 13: 9780712668590

Publisher: Pimlico, 2002

Synopsis

'The image I have is a kid on a country lane on a Saturday afternoon herding his family cattle, meaning no harm to anybody and putting one step wrong. It's one thing to die in combat, it's one thing to die defending land, but it's another thing to die tending cattle on a Saturday afternoon and we want a world where that doesn't happen' - Michael Ignatieff

During the twentieth century a landmine plague raged across the globe. It began on the battlefields of two world wars, it gathered momentum in Korea and Vietnam and then spread like wildfire throughout the developing world.

The Devil's Gardens is the definitive story of the landmine. It is the story of the development and proliferation of a weapon of terror. It is also the story of suffering and devastation, and a worldwide crusade to put an end to the curse of landmines forever. The issues surrounding landmines and their continued use are controversial. Drawing on a wide range of distinguished interviewees and the authors' first-hand experiences in severely mine-affected countries, The Devil's Gardens look at all sides of the landmine story.

About this title

Review

Landmines are universally reviled and yet globally sown; The Devil's Gardens gives an account of the weapon's history aiming to explain how that tragic and paradoxical situation came about.

The authors are the producers and the directors of a tied-in TV docu-series; as such the book is structured with an eye to viewers as much as readers. It starts off with the geopolitical state of play today, then hopscotches back through history. On the way it touches on every base. From Angola to Vietnam, from Pol Pot to Saddam Hussein, from sinisterly sophisticated modern weapons like the "Valmara 69 bounding fragmentation device" to the primitive "earthbusters" of Passchendaele and the Somme, Monin & Gallimore sketch out the ways and places landmines have been used and abused. They also analyse the horrors inflicted, how landmines are designed to cause "traumatic amputation", rather than death, how small and cheap modern mines, so often employed in Third World conflicts, can wreak damage on life and limb decades after the conclusion of the wars that brought them into being.

That said, those seeking a comprehensive and detailed history of the landmine-as-weapon might more profitably read elsewhere. This isn't an in-depth study of military thinking or techniques. It is a book openly devoted to its cause--Landmine Prohibition. As a result the most forceful and authoritative chapters are those devoted to the progress and future of that pacifist campaign; fortunately for the reader they comprise at least half of this punchy, powerful, angry, tendentious volume. --Sean Thomas

Review

"A highly readable and thoughtful account of the determined efforts to call governments to account over the appalling human cost of landmines...The Devil's Gardens, with its unflinching descriptions of mines and their effects, might help to remind us of the limits of progress so far" (Independent)

"The Devil's Garden is a thoroughly researched and compelling history of landmine use and development" (Sunday Tribune)

"The book poses many questions regarding the irresponsible use and proliferation of mines and provides a ray of hope that treaties and de-mining campaigns will end the landmine devastation of innocent civilians" (Military Review)

About this edition

• Publisher: Pimlico
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0712668594
• ISBN 13: 9780712668590
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256