Yerevan /Mediamax/. Launch of the book "Truth Held Hostage, America and the Armenian Genocide - What then? What now?” written by former U.S. Ambassador to Armenia, retired dimplomat John Evans, will take place today at USC Institute of Armenian Studies.

Mediamax reminds that while giving a speech to representatives of Armenian community at University of California, Berkeley on February 19, 2005, then U.S. Ambassador to Armenia John Evans called the events of 1915 “the Genocide”. A few months later, he was removed from his post of U.S. Ambassador to Armenia and retired.

John Evans stated later that he didn’t regret using the word Genocide to describe the Ottoman Empire’s policy of extermination of Armenians.

In his book, Evans chronicles his experiences prior to and following his public statement.

“Ambassador John Evans’s Truth Held Hostage is the most important work about the Armenian genocide by a US diplomat since Henry Morgenthau’s groundbreaking Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story in 1918. Evans writes with an elegant clarity that allows us to experience his journey into a major personal and political ethical dilemma concerning the truth of history and the untruth of US government protocol in the name of foreign policy politics,” said Armenian-American writer Peter Balakian, who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize a few days earlier.

According to Senior Associate at Carnegie Europe Thomas de Waal, the book is fascinating not just for anyone interested in Armenian issues, but as an inside story of international diplomacy and politics of recent times.

Israel W. Charny, Executive Director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem, expressed an opinion that one can learn a great deal about the Armenian Genocide from John Evans’s book.