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An Ordinary Man — Paul Rusesabagina
Full Title: An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography
Paul Rusesabagina (with Tom Zoellner)
Viking · New York · 2006
First Edition · Second Printing · Signed by Paul Rusesabagina
The Book:
The first edition, second printing of Paul Rusesabagina’s An Ordinary Man, written with Tom Zoellner and published by Viking in 2006. Signed by Rusesabagina on the title page, this copy preserves the firsthand account of the man whose actions during the 1994 Rwandan genocide became internationally known through Hotel Rwanda. Original quarter black paper over gray paper-covered boards, retaining the original unclipped dust jacket priced $32.95.
Condition:
Fine book in a Near Fine+ dust jacket. The binding is square and tight with exceptionally clean boards, bright gilt spine lettering, and a fresh interior free from ownership markings or structural defects. The jacket retains bright colors, excellent gloss, and sharp edges, with only trivial handling wear preventing a Fine designation. Protected in an archival polyester jacket. The title page bears Paul Rusesabagina’s signature.
Story Of The Book
History often remembers genocide through numbers. Paul Rusesabagina insisted that it should also remember individual choices.
In 1994, Rwanda descended into one of the most concentrated campaigns of mass killing in modern history. Over approximately one hundred days, hundreds of thousands of people were murdered as extremist forces targeted the country’s Tutsi population and others who resisted the violence.
Rusesabagina was the manager of the Hôtel des Mille Collines in Kigali. As the killing spread, the hotel became a refuge. Rusesabagina recounts using the tools available to him—relationships, negotiation, persuasion, telephone calls, favors, alcohol, and an intimate understanding of how powerful people behaved—to protect more than 1,200 people sheltering inside the hotel.
His story later became internationally famous through the film Hotel Rwanda. But An Ordinary Man returned that story to Rusesabagina himself. Published in 2006, the memoir allowed the person behind the dramatization to describe the genocide, the people trapped inside the hotel, and the decisions he made while violence consumed the world outside it.
The title contains the book’s central argument. Rusesabagina did not present courage as something reserved for extraordinary people. He presented it as a succession of ordinary decisions made when refusing to act would have been easier.
Why It’s In The Collection
An Ordinary Man belongs in Consigned to Darkness because witness literature does more than document what power did. It preserves what individual human beings chose to do in response.
The Rwandan genocide demonstrates the catastrophic endpoint of authoritarian propaganda, ethnic dehumanization, organized political violence, and the collapse of institutions capable of protecting human life. Rusesabagina’s memoir approaches that history from inside one small refuge, where survival depended not on abstract principles but on individual decisions made under extraordinary pressure.
This particular copy strengthens that connection because Rusesabagina himself signed the title page. The signature physically joins the testimony to the person giving it: the witness whose recollections fill the book has left his own hand inside the object preserving them.
Although this copy is a second printing rather than the first, it remains an early printing of the original 2006 Viking edition in exceptional condition. More importantly for this collection, it preserves something that printing priority alone cannot provide: a direct physical connection between an account of mass violence and the witness who survived to tell it.
Collection Categories: Witness Literature · Civil Rights · Anti-Authoritarianism · Political Movements · War & Conflict · Signed
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Authentication Evidence
Title page identifies the work as An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography by Paul Rusesabagina with Tom Zoellner.
Copyright page identifies Viking as publisher and states “First published in 2006 by Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.”
The first-publication statement and absence of any revised-edition or later-edition designation support identification as part of the original First Edition.
Copyright-page number line reads 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2.
The lowest number present in the number line is 2, positively identifying this copy as the Second Printing; the number 1 is absent.
Original quarter black paper over gray paper-covered boards is present.
Original unclipped dust jacket retains the publisher’s prices of U.S. $32.95 and Canada $39.00.
Jacket publisher information, ISBN 0-670-03752-4, Viking imprint, binding, typography, and production details are consistent with the 2006 Viking First Edition.
Title page bears a handwritten signature attributed to Paul Rusesabagina, the named author and central witness whose account the book preserves.
The photographs establish the presence of the signature, but no independent third-party autograph authentication or documented signing provenance has been established.
No evidence of book-club manufacture, ex-library provenance, rebinding, facsimile dust jacket, or later-edition alteration is observed.
Taken together, the observable bibliographic evidence supports identification as an authentic 2006 Viking First Edition · Second Printing, signed by Paul Rusesabagina.
Full Title: An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography
Paul Rusesabagina (with Tom Zoellner)
Viking · New York · 2006
First Edition · Second Printing · Signed by Paul Rusesabagina
The Book:
The first edition, second printing of Paul Rusesabagina’s An Ordinary Man, written with Tom Zoellner and published by Viking in 2006. Signed by Rusesabagina on the title page, this copy preserves the firsthand account of the man whose actions during the 1994 Rwandan genocide became internationally known through Hotel Rwanda. Original quarter black paper over gray paper-covered boards, retaining the original unclipped dust jacket priced $32.95.
Condition:
Fine book in a Near Fine+ dust jacket. The binding is square and tight with exceptionally clean boards, bright gilt spine lettering, and a fresh interior free from ownership markings or structural defects. The jacket retains bright colors, excellent gloss, and sharp edges, with only trivial handling wear preventing a Fine designation. Protected in an archival polyester jacket. The title page bears Paul Rusesabagina’s signature.
Story Of The Book
History often remembers genocide through numbers. Paul Rusesabagina insisted that it should also remember individual choices.
In 1994, Rwanda descended into one of the most concentrated campaigns of mass killing in modern history. Over approximately one hundred days, hundreds of thousands of people were murdered as extremist forces targeted the country’s Tutsi population and others who resisted the violence.
Rusesabagina was the manager of the Hôtel des Mille Collines in Kigali. As the killing spread, the hotel became a refuge. Rusesabagina recounts using the tools available to him—relationships, negotiation, persuasion, telephone calls, favors, alcohol, and an intimate understanding of how powerful people behaved—to protect more than 1,200 people sheltering inside the hotel.
His story later became internationally famous through the film Hotel Rwanda. But An Ordinary Man returned that story to Rusesabagina himself. Published in 2006, the memoir allowed the person behind the dramatization to describe the genocide, the people trapped inside the hotel, and the decisions he made while violence consumed the world outside it.
The title contains the book’s central argument. Rusesabagina did not present courage as something reserved for extraordinary people. He presented it as a succession of ordinary decisions made when refusing to act would have been easier.
Why It’s In The Collection
An Ordinary Man belongs in Consigned to Darkness because witness literature does more than document what power did. It preserves what individual human beings chose to do in response.
The Rwandan genocide demonstrates the catastrophic endpoint of authoritarian propaganda, ethnic dehumanization, organized political violence, and the collapse of institutions capable of protecting human life. Rusesabagina’s memoir approaches that history from inside one small refuge, where survival depended not on abstract principles but on individual decisions made under extraordinary pressure.
This particular copy strengthens that connection because Rusesabagina himself signed the title page. The signature physically joins the testimony to the person giving it: the witness whose recollections fill the book has left his own hand inside the object preserving them.
Although this copy is a second printing rather than the first, it remains an early printing of the original 2006 Viking edition in exceptional condition. More importantly for this collection, it preserves something that printing priority alone cannot provide: a direct physical connection between an account of mass violence and the witness who survived to tell it.
Collection Categories: Witness Literature · Civil Rights · Anti-Authoritarianism · Political Movements · War & Conflict · Signed
———
Authentication Evidence
Title page identifies the work as An Ordinary Man: An Autobiography by Paul Rusesabagina with Tom Zoellner.
Copyright page identifies Viking as publisher and states “First published in 2006 by Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.”
The first-publication statement and absence of any revised-edition or later-edition designation support identification as part of the original First Edition.
Copyright-page number line reads 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2.
The lowest number present in the number line is 2, positively identifying this copy as the Second Printing; the number 1 is absent.
Original quarter black paper over gray paper-covered boards is present.
Original unclipped dust jacket retains the publisher’s prices of U.S. $32.95 and Canada $39.00.
Jacket publisher information, ISBN 0-670-03752-4, Viking imprint, binding, typography, and production details are consistent with the 2006 Viking First Edition.
Title page bears a handwritten signature attributed to Paul Rusesabagina, the named author and central witness whose account the book preserves.
The photographs establish the presence of the signature, but no independent third-party autograph authentication or documented signing provenance has been established.
No evidence of book-club manufacture, ex-library provenance, rebinding, facsimile dust jacket, or later-edition alteration is observed.
Taken together, the observable bibliographic evidence supports identification as an authentic 2006 Viking First Edition · Second Printing, signed by Paul Rusesabagina.