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By James E. Waller
2nd ed, 351 pp, $23.95
New York, NY, Oxford University Press, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-1953-1456-4

JAMA. 2008;300(6):737-738.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Fairy tales, church sermons, and horror movies all have something in common. They acknowledge the presence of evil in the world as well as human beings' disturbing capacity for destructive force. Malevolence has been around for a long time. According to the Bible, death's first appearance on earth was not only murder but fratricide: Cain killed his brother Abel. How to account for the existence and persistence of human evil? Is wickedness contagious? What type of person demonstrates the most heinous behavior? Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing offers a psychological explanation as to why some human beings are so deliberately harmful to others. It emphasizes that the most extraordinary acts of evil and killing are in fact committed by ordinary individuals.

History shows that whenever human beings get together, conflicts and fighting tend to erupt. A staggering 150 wars were waged in the 40 years . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Tony Miksanek, MD, Reviewer
Benton, Illinois
tmiksanek@aol.com

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