In a blog post by Damien Thompson of the Daily Telegraph (U.K.) I find a reference to a book entitled Fields of Fire: An Atlas of Ethnic Conflict by Stuart Notholt, I haven't yet seen it but the description looks interesting. Notholt says it provides:
A concise, authoritative commentary on each of the nearly one hundred ethnic conflicts around the world, with a summary of key dates, events and demographic data, together with specially drawn maps providing a geographical context.The very idea causes me to hear distant echoes of Tom Lehrer's musical version of Sheldon Harnick's Merry Minuet as sung by the Kingston Trio. They sang:
They’re rioting in Africa, They’re starving in Spain,That's our species ... the killer ape ... red in tooth and claw, according to Tennyson.
There’s hurricanes in Florida, And Texas needs rain
This whole world is festering with unhappy souls
The French hate the Germans, The Germans hate the Poles
Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch
And I don’t like anybody very much
But we can be tranquil and thankful and proud
For Man’s been endowed with a mushroom-shaped cloud
And we can be certain that some lovely day
Someone will set the spark off…and we will all be blown away
They’re rioting in Africa, There’s strife in Iran
What Nature doesn’t do to us will be done by our Fellow Man
