About this item
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.
About the Author
James Dawes writes about human rights, empathy, evil, and literature. He is the founder of the Program in Human Rights and Humanitarianism at Macalester College. You can hear samples of his radio interviews and online pieces here:
CNN Op-Ed: "What Makes a Man Eat Another Man's Heart? "
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/15/opinion/dawes-syria-video
Interview on the Brian Lehrer Show:
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/2013/may/13/reflecting-war-crimes/
