Foreword: what does trauma do? Arthur Kleinman; Introduction: an anthropology of the effects of genocide and mass violence: memory, symptom, and recovery Devon E. Hinton and Alexander L. Hinton; Part I. Private and Public Memory: 1. The Vietnam War traumas Heonik Kwon; 2. Haunted by Aceh: specters of violence in post-Suharto Indonesia Byron J. Good; 3. Remembering and ill health in post-invasion Kuwait: topographies, collaborations, and mediations Conerly Casey; 4. 'Behaves like a rooster and cries like a (four-eyed) canine': the politics and poetics of depression and psychiatry in Iran Orkideh Behrouzan and Michael M. J. Fisher; 5. Embodying the distant past: Holocaust descendant narratives of the lived presence of the genocidal past Carol A. Kidron; 6. Half-disciplined chaos: thoughts on contingency, story, and trauma Vincent Crapanzano; Part II. Symptom and Syndrome: 7. 'The spirits enter me to force me to be a communist': political embodiment, idioms of distress, spirit possession, and thought disorder in Bali Robert Lemelson; 8. 'Everything here is temporary': psychological distress and suffering among Iraqi refugees in Egypt Nadia El-Shaarawi; 9. Key idioms of distress and PTSD among rural Cambodians: the results of a needs-assessment survey Devon E. Hinton, Alexander L. Hinton and Kok-Thay Eng; 10. Attack of the grotesque: suffering, sleep paralysis, and distress during the Sierra Leone war Doug Henry; Part III. Response and Recovery: 11. The chaplain turns to God: negotiating post-traumatic stress disorder in the American military Erin Finley; 12. Acehnese women's tales of traumatic experience, resilience, and recovery Mary-Jo Delvecchio Good; 13. Rwanda's Gacaca trials: toward a new nationalism or business as usual? Christopher C. Taylor; 14. Pasts imperfect: talking about justice with former combatants in Colombia Kimberly Theidon; 15. Atrocity and nonsense: the ethnographic study of dehumanization Alexandra Pillen; 16. Growing up on the frontline: coming to terms with war-related loss in Gonagala, Sri Lanka Kenneth E. Miller and Sulani Perera; 17. The role of traditional rituals for the reintegration and psychosocial well-being of child soldiers in Nepal Brandon Kohrt; Commentary: wrestling with the angels of history: memory, symptom, and intervention Laurence J. Kirmayer.