"This intriguing book, part memoir by a father and son separated by 60 years of history, part academic treatise on war, genocide, and the Holocaust, is a must for anyone looking to find an introduction to these issues at at time when, more than ever, they are in our daily consciousness."

Jon Blair, writer, producer and director of the Academy Award and Emmy winning documentary Anne Frank Remembered; the British Academy Award winning Schindler: The True Story; and the Emmy winning series Reporters at War.

"There is hardly any essay that so successfully explores the permanent problems facing mankind in so few pages."

Gottfried H. Wagner, musicologist and human rights activist and author of Twilight of the Wagners: The Unveiling of a Family Legacy.

"Neither conventional history nor standard survivor's memoir, Ruin's Wheel is a Dutchman¹s chronicle and reflection on the shocking epoch in Dutch history and its aftermath when the Germans marched into Holland in the early morning of May 10, 1940, and his son's desire to set his text in the context of genocide.

Part One is a moving "thrice born" account of Jan Colijn, Dean of General Studies, the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey: his natal origins in descriptions of boyhood and adolescent years in Holland; his life in America to pursue graduate work and ultimately an academic career; and, at the death of his mother, his return home to encounter again the painful cycle of WW II memories.

Part Two is Izaak Colijn's testimonial diary, which speaks to the function and dysfunction of the Dutch state and society during the Nazi years. Part Three and the book's Appendix elaborate on Jewish victimization and genocidal acts then and now, and attempt a detailed answer to 'What Have We Learned about Genocide?' What emerges from pater et fils is that ever-n-again 'thinking people' are the surest antidote to societal evil. Ruin's Wheel is a reader-friendly, invaluable first-person psycho-sociological discussion of why the Shoah (Holocaust) and genocide matters."

Zev Garber, professor and Chair of Jewish Studies, Los Angeles Valley College and co-author of Double Takes: Thinking and Rethinking Issues of Modern Judaism in Ancient Contexts (University Press of America, 2004) and editor and contributor, Mel Gibson's Passion: the Film, the Controversy, and Its Implications (Purdue University Press, 2006).