This book makes Aram Andonian's The Great Crime available for English language readers. The Great Crime served as the first systematic documentation of the Armenian Genocide, introducing the memoir of an Ottoman bureaucrat that contained handwritten copies of approximately 52 Ottoman documents, including direct orders to kill Armenians. It therefore holds immense historical significance, as it provides irrefutable evidence of the Armenian Genocide using original Ottoman documents.

In 1983, the Turkish government published a book claiming that Andonian's work was fraudulent by presenting three main arguments: 1. That the Ottoman bureaucrat named did not exist; 2. A non-existent person cannot have a memoir and, if it exists, you must show the handwritten manuscripts; 3. The allegedly fake telegrams have 12 different reasons for their inauthenticity. Based on these arguments, Andonian's book and the official Ottoman documents it contained were discredited as a historical source. Taner Akçam's previous book with Palgrave Macmillan, Killing Orders, was a response to the Turkish government's attempt to discredit Andonian's book and documents, and rehabilitated their status as valuable materials in the study of the Armenian Genocide.

The Great Crime stands as an immortal testament to historical truth, and this version of it includes a detailed preface written by Akçam, incorporating his new findings and information that has come to light since the publication of Killing Orders, along with additional explanatory notes.

Taner Akçam is the inaugural Director of the Armenian Genocide Research Program at the Promise Armenian Institute at UCLA, USA. Before joining UCLA, Akçam held the Kaloosdian and Mugar Endowed Chair of Armenian Genocide Studies at Clark University. Akçam is widely recognized as one of the first Turkish scholars to write extensively on the Ottoman-Turkish Genocide of the Armenians.