Presented with accounts of genocide and torture, we ask how people could bring themselves to commit such horrendous acts. A searching meditation on our all-too-human capacity for inhumanity, Evil Men confronts atrocity head-on—how it looks and feels, what motivates it, how it can be stopped.
Drawing on firsthand interviews with convicted war criminals from the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), James Dawes leads us into the frightening territory where soldiers perpetrated some of the worst crimes imaginable: murder, torture, rape, medical experimentation on living subjects. Transcending conventional reporting and commentary, Dawes’s narrative weaves together unforgettable segments from the interviews with consideration of the troubling issues they raise. Telling the personal story of his journey to Japan, Dawes also lays bare the cultural misunderstandings and ethical compromises that at times called the legitimacy of his entire project into question. For this book is not just about the things war criminals do. It is about what it is like, and what it means, to befriend them.
Do our stories of evil deeds make a difference? Can we depict atrocity without sensational curiosity? Anguished and unflinchingly honest, as eloquent as it is raw and painful, Evil Men asks hard questions about the most disturbing capabilities human beings possess, and acknowledges that these questions may have no comforting answers.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Ranging across philosophy, literature and social science, Evil Men deploys a variety of sources--Augustine's account of evil as the privation of good; Thomas Hardy's poetry
on the 'Vast Imbecility' that seems to inhere in the nature of things; and sociological studies of police torturers, among others--to produce a careful and sensitive exploration of some of the many different questions, not all answerable, that are posed by the 'problem of evil.'
(John Gray Literary Review 2013-05-01)"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Shipping:
US$ 4.95
Within U.S.A.
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 263pp. Photos on request. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Seller Inventory # 087053
Book Description Condition: New. Book is in NEW condition. 0.5. Seller Inventory # 0674072650-2-1
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Brand New!. Seller Inventory # VIB0674072650