It is Hersch Lauterpacht, a Cambridge law professor who brings in the concept of the crime against humanity and Raphael Lemkin, a Polish persecutor for that of genocide during Nuremberg trial in the winter of 1945. They were from the same university in Lviv and learnt under the same professors. These war crimes trials gave birth to the modern system of international justice. Philippe Sands, a human rights lawyer involved in Chilean dictator Pinochet’s extradition trial, recounts the life and work of both men that lay the foundation for international humanity law. The story Sands tells is intensely moving as it is also a personal family memoir about his grandfather and his wife’s escape from the Nazis. Sands proceeds in the manner of an archaeologist digging through heaps of historical documents interweaving the Nuremberg trials with a personal "detective story" of the Sands' family history.