The Evil 100
by Martin G. Wolcott
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Book Summary Information
Author: Martin G. WolcottEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-06
ISBN: 0806522690
Number of pages: 348
Publisher: Citadel
Book Reviews of The Evil 100
Book Review: A bad, bad exploration of evil
Summary: 1 Stars
I can't figure out who this extremely weak book is aimed at. As a serious discussion of evil -- something I held out hope for until a couple of minutes after I cracked open the cover -- it is far too superficial and haphazard. A light and fun treatment of the subject? Um, doesn't writing something about evil preclude that tact?
Instead, we're left with an an almost random list of people who, at the highest levels, are responsible for some truly atrocious events (Adolph Hitler is first; Ossama bin Laden eighth), then eroding into a list of rapists, assassins, and serial killers at the middle levels, before concluding with the world's most famous sexual fetishist (the Marquis De Sade) and a couple of computer virus writers. Almost half of the evildoers are from the U.S.; almost all are men.
None of this is to belittle the horrible to nasty things these people did, though it could be argued that the format of this book does that. The whole concept is similar to learning about food by writing about the hundred most tasty meals ever prepared, or discussing parenting by ranking the hundred best-behaved children ever to be potty trained. It's absurd. Much more interesting would have been an investigation into what kind of psychology makes people evil, or of historical trends regarding the subject.
But there are other problems:
--How do you rank kinds of evil? The whole process requires some kind of formula based on how much persecution is worth how many murders, that the murder of anonymous masses is worth more or less than a high degree of sexual perversion, a lack of sanity, or a low IQ, and puts a ratio on how much property damage is worth a human life.
--Also, how good is the history this information in based on? Comparing the well-documented evils of Nazi leaders with the myth of someone like Vlad The Impaler, the historical character that Count Dracula is based on who is ranked in the top ten and who may or may not have existed ... well, you see the point, which is made over and over again.
--There are many factual errors. The number of dead listed for the battle of Antietam is actually the number of men killed, injured, or missing. Chilean dictator Salvador Allende was not a Communist. And no serious commentator has blamed Iraq's Sadam Hussein for the anthrax attacks in the U.S. in 2001. There are many more examples.
--Then, as with any top 100 compilation, what about those left off the list? Africa and Latin America are woefully underrepresented. What about the perpetrators of apartheid in South Africa or of the African slave trade? Or Fransisco Pizarro, who destroyed the great Inca capital of Cusco and killed tens of thousands of natives so he could send their gold and silver home, to the smelters of Sevilla? What about Abamael Guzman, the founder of Latin Americas bloodiest rebel group, or Alfredo Stroessener, who ran Paraguay as a haven for ex-Nazis and who left his country a generation behind most of the rest of the continent?
In the end, the book's limited value is as a collection of mini biographies of despicable characters aimed at the small niche of people interested in rubber necking at an almost random collection of people who left a negative mark on history. For anything beyond that, this book is not up to the task.
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