The Evil That Men Do

Born of a preoccupation with saints and sinners, The Evil That Men Do is Brian Masters' investigation into the nature of good and evil, and the different ways in which they can be manifested. It examines the fundamental questions of why we are as we are: why we are good, why we care for one another, why we can be altruistic and kind as well as selfish and cruel. According to science, we are prisoners of our genetic inheritance. Are our impulses therefore to some extent inescapable, compelling us to behave in a certain manner, irrespective of the guidelines imposed by instinct or civilization? Or can we determine our individual patterns of behaviour? Do we really have a choice? Using a diverse multitude of examples, from St. Francis of Assisi, Audrey Hepburn, Bruce Chatwin and Bob Geldof to the Marquis de Sade, Adolf Hitler and Peter Sutcliffe, from the Spanish Inquisition to Nazi Germany to the Vietnam War, Brian Masters examines this age-old yet intensely contemporary subject. At a time when civilization seems on the verge of meltdown, he has produced an incisive, thoughtful and provocative meditation on a fundamental human question.

One of the New York Times Book Review's Top Ten Best Crime Novels of 2020 "[McMahon] tells his story with flair."--New York Times Book Review The author of The Good Detective delivers a gripping and atmospheric new novel in which a cop takes on a harrowing case and confronts old personal demons. What if the one good thing you did in your life doomed you to die? A hard-nosed real estate baron is dead, and detectives P.T. Marsh and Remy Morgan learn there's a long list of suspects. Mason Falls, Georgia, may be a small town, but Ennis Fultz had filled it with professional rivals, angry neighbors, and a wronged ex-wife. And when Marsh realizes that this potential murder might be the least of his troubles, he begins to see what happens when ordinary people become capable of evil. As Marsh and Morgan dig into the case, it becomes clear that Fultz's death was not an isolated case of revenge. It may be part of a dark web of crimes connected to an accident that up-ended Marsh's life a couple years earlier--and that now threatens the life of a young child. Marsh veers dangerously off track as his search for clues becomes personal..and brings him to a place where a man's good deeds turn out to be more dangerous than his worst crimes.

Twenty-two years in the FBI, sixteen of them as a member of the Bureau's Behavioral Science Unit. Thousands of homicides, rapes, suicides, and other gruesome crimes. Roy Hazelwood, like many investigators, has seen it all. But unlike most, he's gone further -- into the dark and twisted psyches of serial killers and sadistic sexual offenders -- and has emerged as one of the world's foremost experts on the sexual criminal. Now, acclaimed true-crime writer Stephen G. Michaud takes you into the heart of Hazelwood's work through dozens of startling cases, including those of the Lonely Heart Killer, the "Ken and Barbie" killings, the Atlanta Child Murders, and many more. Here Michaud and Hazelwood go beyond the lurid details, to a deeper understanding of the depraved minds behind the grisly crimes, in a stark, startling, and fascinating work you will not soon forget.

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.

Working as a security guard at a New Jersey storage facility after losing his P.I. license, Jackson Donne is reunited with his long-estranged sister when she warns him that their Alzheimer's-afflicted mother has been revealing long-hidden secrets that hold clues to a sinister past, leading to brutal attacks on members of his family, and forcing him to search for answers before it is too late. Original. 30,000 first printing.

This book considers the Church's past failings and fills a gap in our understanding of what it means to be a Christian in the twenty-first century.