Part of a generation that was admonished in its youth to "remember the starving Armenians," Peterson traveled to Armenia in 1997 as a Peace Corps volunteer and was moved by the country’s troubled history. After research, he edited a collection of essays published by the University of Virginia Press under the title "Starving Armenians": America and the Armenian Genocide 1915-1930 and After (2004), which explores the American response to the violence against and dispersion of the Armenian people during and after World War I, when more than 1.5 million of the country's minority population died.
Part of a generation that was told "remember the starving Armenians," Peterson visited Armenia in 1997 as a Peace Corps volunteer and was moved by the nation's troubled history. After conducting research, he edited an essay collection published by the University of Virginia Press titled "Starving Armenians": America and the Armenian Genocide 1915-1930 and After (2004), which examines America's response to the violence against and displacement of the Armenian people during and after World War I, when over 1.5 million individuals from the country perished.