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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. James Dawes’s unflinchingly honest account, drawing on firsthand interviews, is not just about the things Japanese war criminals did, but about what it means to befriend them.
- Sales Rank: #671230 in eBooks
- Published on: 2013-05-06
- Released on: 2013-05-06
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review
James Dawes writes a deep, broad meditation on violence from Arendt to Zimbardo, from atrocity to forgiveness, the paradoxes of representation and the tears of war, sincere and otherwise. These Japanese men tell disturbing stories that will not let one go. While capturing their motives with a social scientist's eye for causality, Dawes draws out the violent particulars with a novelist's eye for personal meaning, self-care, and philosophical significance. This is a rare achievement. There are less than one hundred and fifty cases where torturers speak fully in their own words, and none that are written with such literary self-consciousness. (Darius Rejali, author of Torture and Democracy)
This extraordinary book is by turns horrifying, enraging, and disturbing. Dawes both brings us into the thought world of criminals against humanity and simultaneously reminds us of the impossibility of entering anyone's mind with any kind of confidence. Evil Men grapples with the impossible challenge of making meaning of what it sees; but most important, Dawes's gaze never wavers. (Noah R. Feldman, Harvard Law School)
Evil Men lies well outside the boundaries of established academic discourse, and the form of the book is extraordinary in many ways. James Dawes not only probes the depths of the human capacity for atrocity, but also explores in an altogether original and nearly unrepeatable way the human capacity for sympathy or empathy with those whose acts have placed them beyond the pale of civilized society. (Geoffrey Harpham, National Humanities Center)
Powerful and unusually told, the book raises questions that resist easy answers. (Publishers Weekly 2013-03-04)
Fascinating, original, and moving...We probably won't solve the problem of evil by thinking about it. But we certainly won't solve it by not thinking about it--and that is a good reason to read this remarkable book. (Douglas Kerr South China Morning Post 2013-04-21)
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)
Evil Men is painful to read. Horror and terror are etched into every page. Atrocities are reflected upon--sometimes calmly; other times with cold fury. The book's author, James Dawes, forces us to think carefully about the ethics of telling stories--true ones--about acts of staggering cruelty. Disturbingly, it is a book about friendship, too. When we are brought face to face with men who raped, tortured and murdered men, women and children, where should we look? Straight into their eyes, he advises....A complex, albeit totally absorbing and brilliant book. (Joanna Bourke Times Higher Education 2013-05-30)
Evil Men explores the causes and effects of human wickedness. At its heart is a series of interviews that James Dawes conducted with a group of Japanese war criminals who fought in the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45…While he attempts to understand people for whom bayonetting civilians was something between an initiation rite and a training exercise, he also fears that understanding will trivialize what happened…It is because Dawes finds no ethical resting place that his relentlessly honest book is a moral act of the highest order. Required reading. (Raymond Tallis Prospect Magazine 2013-06-01)
Dawes approaches the topic in impressive turns as social scientist, psychoanalyst, philosopher, and human rights activist. His process of digging into the subject matter is intensely deliberate, always maintaining an assiduously respectful distance and an unwavering eye on the delicacy inherent in a public discussion about and with the perpetrators of heinous violence...The interviews accost us with their simple horror, and they make Evil Men a difficult book to read. One wants to quickly dash away stark images of children shot or women raped...Dawes has led us down the path of ethical inquiry, but after events like the marathon bombings, experience reminds us how difficult it is to talk about such horror in a way that conveys the full weight of our feelings. Language always falls short. There will never be comprehension; only a noble try. (Geoffrey Young Brooklyn Rail 2013-06-01)
[An] unsettlingly brilliant book. (Brian Bethune Maclean’s 2013-06-07)
In reading this text, in experiencing these stories, in reveling in these histories as we work our way into the center of them and then attempt to find our way back, our own hands are bloodied too.
(Legacy Russell Guernica 2013-07-30)
James Dawes's commendable new book, Evil Men, reflects, carefully and nervously, on the subject of human cruelty...For anyone interested in the bloody horizons of the human condition, it makes for essential reading. (Christopher Byrd Washington Post 2013-08-09)
Dawes juxtaposes the soldiers’ stories with a discussion of our own approach to contemporary war crimes, and although he doesn’t draw them explicitly, unsettling parallels emerge…As Evil Men eloquently attests, describing atrocities does not make them any more comprehensible. Nor, in trying to understand them, do we make them any more forgivable. (Andrew Stark Times Literary Supplement 2013-10-18)
About the Author
James Dawes is Professor of English and Director of the Program in Human Rights and Humanitarianism at Macalester College.
Most helpful customer reviews
21 of 24 people found the following review helpful.
A Compelling Read about Atrocity and Forgiveness
By GS
James Dawes tackles the complicated subject of atrocity and, more specifically, is interested in analyzing and understanding the people who commit acts of violence. This is a constant curiosity for thinkers in all societies, but the writing and form of "Evil Men" is so unique and accessible that the book provides a lens into what is, for most readers, an unfamiliar world, but in a way that is both easy and thrilling to read.
What makes this book not like any other on the subject is the intense personal nature of it. A great deal of the book recounts personal testimonies from war criminals, primarily former Japanese soldiers. These testimonies are powerful and intimate, stories that are at times surprisingly relatable. Personal stories where we can hear the voices of the "evil men" are rare, providing an insight otherwise unavailable to us.
Intermingled with these stories is the narrative of the Dawes, the author, interviewing and speaking with the men. The self-awareness of the research and analysis is apparent, and I for one greatly appreciated the transparency of the author, and found his story fascinating and personal, drawing connections to himself and his own life just like the reader. You can tell how deeply Dawes cares about this subject and handling it with care.
But the book isn't just a collection of experiences. Dawes expertly weaves in the works of other thinkers and academics on the subject, providing an analysis of violence and humanity. But this book never feels "academic," and is as much of a page-turner as any book I've read.
There is a great deal we can learn about ourselves in the process of understanding others, especially those who may seem so unlike us on the surface, but feel just like we do, everything from love to jealousy, friendship to hatred. Dawes navigates this territory masterfully, resulting in a book anyone can pick up and start reading, and that everyone will want to finish.
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
Riveting and important. Five stars might cover it.
By Jamie Mason
I've just closed the back cover on possibly the most important book I've ever read. I'm tempted to go buy a carton of copies to give out. It easily evil menand immediately takes a place in my top five favorite books. Although, "favorite" doesn't quite fit. It's a hard book.
In the interest of full disclosure, James Dawes, the author of EVIL MEN, was the valedictorian of my high school class. But make no mistake; this isn't a pal hawking a cohort's book. Jim and I aren't friends. Not to say that we're enemies. We just don't really know each other. I saw notice of the book on our school's alumni Facebook page and, being curious, thought I'd have a look.
Jim Dawes and I didn't have overlapping social circles in school. I do remember him, but I imagine that most of the class of 1987 remembers him. He was like that. Brilliant, kind, and athletic, he rather had all of his ducks in a row back then, which is remarkable for any kid that age. But there was more gravity to Jim than there was to other socially and academically successful teenagers. He was prominent in an unusual way, even if that way is still difficult to articulate all these years later. It left an impression that has lasted decades and definitely had something to do with being able to relate comfortably to a gaggle of peers while thinking quite a bit beyond us.
Apparently that has carried over into a life of valuable research and singular eloquence.
And that's probably all I'll say about James Dawes, the person, because a) I still don't know him personally and b) this isn't really about James Dawes, it's about the book, EVIL MEN, just out from Harvard University Press.
EVIL MEN is a dissection of atrocity and conceptual evil, inspired by a series of interviews with Japanese war criminals. These very old men recounted, through a translator, the horrors they had meted out in uniform during the Sino-Japanese wars. It broadens from there into a display of theory, ethics, scientific study, history, philosophy, and human rights advocacy, all tethered in a coherence that I would have to be incoherent to adequately express my admiration of. Let's just say that you will be quite a bit smarter by `The End' than you were on page one, but you'll need to pay for the education in careful reading. This is by no means a one sit read. It demands (and rewards) deliberation.
There is no making sense of the things we do to each other, especially under the banner of military duty, but the value in this book is discovering that maybe there is a way to make sense of it not making sense. And if that sounds like a bit of intellectual tail-chasing, it isn't. This is not an entertaining book. But having just written that, I have to say that, one step removed, it is vastly entertaining to unfold the map of our collective conscience and see the red dot proclaiming that YOU ARE HERE.
The most remarkable feat of EVIL MEN is in its balance. The moral paradoxes of relating these traumas are thoroughly addressed. Doing justice to the victims with mere words while evoking the necessary vividness to adequately represent the crimes is no easy task. Then avoiding catapulting the whole works into gratuitous carnival takes the utmost heartfelt precision, which he exhibits without faltering. James Dawes is exacting of himself as a researcher, as a writer, and as a moral human being. Following his lead through the nautilus of self-examination is effortless and, somehow, not terrifying. It's not safe to go there, for certain, but it's not safe not go there either, as he explains on the page.
Most importantly, for me, EVIL MEN left me with a notion. If the model of morality is in any way analogous to the model of physics, then this book inspires the hope that perhaps it all works in the same way quantum mechanics plays under the screen of our observable, Newtonian world. Maybe in the act of just examining our malleability and by measuring our own frailty, perhaps we change it.
Go get this challenging, wonderful book. Read it and discover what evil is (or isn't) made of.
11 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
A Page-Turner with a Dark Side
By WB
The author tackles subjects that are not easy to think about, let alone write about. At times the tone is gentle and humble, and at other times the author writes with a bluntness that is both refreshing and essential in communicating stories of atrocity that would otherwise feel overwhelming.
I was immediately hooked by the personal testimonies from the men who committed the crimes. These are stories that no one has talked about in a long time and that no one has ever presented from this perspective. I was grateful to have read them and equally grateful for the author's narrative of his travels in Japan and his reflections on the strangeness of this type of investigative historical research.
I was surprised by how often I connected to some of the characters and experiences relayed in this book. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about how we all experience regret, redemption, and pretty much the whole range of human emotion.
The storytelling is so good, you can't help but read to the end to better understand why the history of war is the way it is, and why we still don't know how to change it.
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