It's hard to spot evil when it's disguised so well?
934787
Who would have suspected a "hard working, small business owner, Army veteran and doting father" to be a violent criminal? A serial killer?? But that is exactly what and who Author JT Hunter tells us about in this True story about Israel Keyes!
This was an easy read only in the sense that JT Hunter tells the story in a way that keeps you wanting to read! (Not so easy to read about horrific crimes themselves)!!  Very good and interesting book!
910012
Addressing the topic of political evil is relevant and important. The world's political evils are obvious: invasive wars, torture, and genocide. Wolfe aptly points these out. His solution is that we the public make ourselves realistically aware of evil. His word is "serious." Now, let's be honest: is seriousness the right weapon with which to combat evil? Of course not. The only counterbalance to evil is goodness. Wolfe fails even to make us aware of the structure of evil in public life when we are not yet at war or not yet committing torture and genocide. He fails to analyze the role of self-justification and scapegoating that flood the speeches of our political leaders. Such self-justification and scapegoating constantly keep the populace on the verge of committing political evil in the form of economic injustice, cultural prejudice, class discrimination, war, or even worse. In sum, political evil is almost as wide spread as the human race if one knows how to identify it. I recommend, like Wolfe, that we get serious, to be sure; but a little bit of goodness might also be of help.
3038875
Mixing feelings about war. How passionate you can be fighting evil. How evil you can be emulating them. The message is clear. Evil is everywhere.
1108727
An allegory of good and evil illustrated in a fantasy world.  I've been a big fan of Burke's, but this time he seems to have exceeded his grasp.  The fictional world should shine an insightful light on the real one, but here we have fiction illuminating a much grander and much odder version of itself.  An exaggeration of an exaggeration.
I've lived in the world that Burke used to write about.  Nobody has ever lived in this one.
However if you like a good fairy tale, this is one of those.  The moral seems to be that evil tends to have bad luck with the real good.
But I just can't and don't buy into evil as a force of nature - it's basically a strategy of defective and deceptive humans and not a purpose in and of itself.  But if you want it to be otherwise, you'll be quite able to enjoy this book.
1105513
I found that book tracks so well with today's sociopolitical  environment, as to be almost prophetic, considering when it was written. The haters are are shown for they are, easily manipulated fools. Some people simply can't see what's plainly in front of them, because they are blinded by their own preconceived notions.
4660389
I imagine this film got made because its characters are so hard to believe that their greedy, malicious, depraved and outrageous actions are almost comical.  In fact, they represent the worst in human interaction. In some scenes good acting saves it, as in the wonderful performance by Tony Shalhoub. (He may be the first victim in a long time you want to see beaten) And in others, who do not need to be mentioned, overacting is just bad. Still, an eye catching hour and a half with a small message for all of us on the seven deadly sins, or at least some of them. All in all better watched on video than the big screen unless its free popcorn day.
843979
Two widely held assumptions are challenged by this learned Catholic; first, that one can never do something intrinsically evil; second, a human person (not just human life) is present at the moment of conception.  On the first, O"Brien (an educator and philosopher)points out that slavery was defined by the last pope as intrinsically evil, and yet in other cultures both popes and saints owned slaves.  An action evil in itself (eg, amputation, lying, abortion) may be justified by circumstances -- his examples are convincing.  He is rightly critical of the violent political interventions by American bishops as obscuring and self defeating.
The book is wide ranging and deep; he criticizes most bishops for their lack of experience and empathy, and now, a loss of credibility.
2429397
Interesting story told by someone who was a witness to what others have called the "banality of evil" in Adolf Hitler, a man who was simultaneously capable of showing compassion to some while launching aggressive wars and planning the extermination of millions.  Misch writes that the Hitler he knew (and saw on a daily basis for years) was neither a superman (as he was portrayed to the German people) or a ranting lunatic (the way he is portrayed in most movies).  Instead, the truth is much more subtle and therefore much more difficult to understand........that evil can lurk within all of us, that without a firm moral compass we may be able to rationalize away the suffering of others, and that, in the end, Adolf Hitler was one of us.....a member of the human race.  I think we do a disservice when we reckon Hitler to be the "most evil" man in history...... Hitler should not be viewed as being essentially any different from other tyrants, some of whom we counted as allies (Stalin, Mao, and a few others come to mind).....the only difference was that Hitler was defeated militarily and his crimes came to the light of day.  For me, the most important message of the book was one that Misch does not draw and that is, without a firm moral compass, humans are not only capable of horrible things, but also of a willful blindness to evil.
3179523
Sometimes I Like This A Lot. But Sometimes I Feel Like It's A Slightly Creepier (In The ~Actually Creepy~ Way) Version Of Flowers Of Evil Without As Much To Say On The Human Condition As Flowers Of Evil.
2692650
As someone born in 1956, I can still find myself with a sense of unreality that when I was a young girl, overt, frank racism reigned.  Sundown laws. Seperate facilities for blacks and whites.  And now, I've had to come face to face with lynching.  You know those old westerns always depict lynchings as done by the riff-raff, the bad folks.  But there it is.  Lynchings that drew crowds and photographers. An event to take kids to!  Lynchings that occurred in Missouri, a neighboring state (and in all likelihood in KS but it wasn't mentioned).  Lynchings preceded by torment and torture.  Lynchings of women.

And Lynchings done without any flinching of the Christian conscience.

It's an ugly and difficult vision to face up to.  And then Cone easily makes his thesis of the actually (blatant) similarity of lynching and crucifixion--that somehow managed to escape connection "back then".

I think it is a cliche to say that we all have the capacity for evil but this is an opportunity to examine the face of evil in our time and to notice how people can be willfully blind to evil.

It is something every white person and every American should read about.  While the temptation is to talk about other evils and other victimizations, it is well worthwhile to sit with the spectre of this evil and to resolve to recognize evil in the other incarnations where it still manifests.
3581907
One always wonders if the evil portrayed in novels is real.....then you watch a documentary on the History channel.  That makes you realize there is no obscenity that has not been physically perpetrated on one human by another human.  This book doesn't dwell on the horror being dealt but makes you understand it's out there in our everyday world.
373567
Adelle has the dubious talent of being able to hear demons and their hellish gloating. She has tried to thwart their nefarious purposes, but has gotten burned by social sigma and bullying when her secret comes out, so she's had to move to a new town to start fresh. This time she's determined to keep a low profile. But when she hears demons celebrating the impending death of the boy who was kind to her, her drive to protect gets the better of her.  And when her warning is vindicated in a grisly fashion, the boy, Levi, demands the truth about how she knew.  What neither Adelle or Levi know is that their growing relationship will alarm dark and murderous forces at work, forces that are determined to cover their tracks.

Good story--tightly plotted and well-written.
 The protagonist, Adelle, is very interesting because of her talent, and while it is kind of a freaky thing to read about, the author handles it well with a combination of sincerity and wry humor.  To me as a reader, a book about someone who hears demons could easily go wrong in about four different ways.  A protagonist so close to demons could get too comfortable with it and end up downplaying the seriousness of evil.  Or the protagonist could have an unwholesome fascination with what she hears.  Or the book could get didactic and preachy.  Or it could be irreverent.  Personally, I felt like this book avoided all those pitfalls.

This isn't the kind of book in which the villains are a mystery, because hey, if there's a demonic posse following a character around in this book, you know something's up.  But you wonder how exactly they are involved, and you read on to find those answers. You'll also read on because you'll want to know what Adelle will do to try to oppose the demons' evil messaging and thwart their plans.

This book carries an underlying theme of the moral significance of our small daily choices, and it made me look at my life in a different way, thinking about whether my choices make me susceptible to the dark side or not.

This story is pretty clean, with only some mild innuendo and some kissing.
4913176
A very readable and intelligently written book with an unfortunate flaw - a cinematic bad guy, so over-the-top and relentlessly evil as to seriously diminish what would otherwise be a contender for "classic" status. It's almost as if it was written to lure a movie option. More likely it's a product of an imagination corrupted by the modern action movie.

The relationships between real-world events and the persons involved, explicit and pseudonymous, are the real treat here. I keep thinking it would be a much better, maybe even great, novel with about 75% less of the implacably evil antagonist.
4575419
The title itself is something of a mystery, since it seems to have no bearing on the actual theme or content of this slim intimate novel.  My overall reaction is twofold.  First, that that the resistance to evil and the essential humankindness embodied in this book are to be taken very seriously.  And second, that there is a constricting thinness of plot--driven perhaps by the clausterphobic nature of the setting.  As a result, this work is more valuable as a commentary on historical events rather than as a major literary accomplishment.
1151910
A few things were not believable, but, overall a good story.  Not easy to figure out who the villian is.
1736450
Every day good people encounter evil, careless, bad people. In Spine, F.E. Mazur explores the effects of these interactions on generally good, caring people. Grayson Lord, a 'Nick Carroway' type narrator and his fellow teachers must deal with the Aftanus family and Asa Aftanus, a new high school student who proves to be a venonmous bully intent on making trouble. And the teachers in this small town school are not cowered by these threats... Set in a small town in central Pennsylvania, the ironic tensions in rural areas between the clear preferences for isolation and the ever-present need to "know everything about everybody" comes to a head when the town's self appointed 'Christian' zealot minister accuses Lord. Readers who want a "Welcome Back Cotter" take on teachers will be uncomfortable with Mazur's portrayal of teachers who are individualistic and strong willed--men who care about their own standards, not those set by others. What a New York Times reviewer once stated of Mary McCarthy's work exposing the all- too-human side of priest also applies to Mazur's portrait of teachers...he 'dares to challenge the ordinary.' On reflection it is not the actions of these teachers that disturbs, but rather how basically good, ordinary people are 'rubbed raw' by unchecked evil, given free rein by the spineless non-actions of many in authority. Excellent writing, well plotted and suspenseful til the very end.
1842964
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?  Andrew K. Stone spells it out in "Disappearing into View."  Empowered with the idiosyncrasies of human frailty Mr. Stone takes us to the seedy side of Boston and it's dark and secretive places where heinous transgressions occur against society as depicted by Mr. Stone.
Mr. Stone depicts a dark place where derelicts and criminals interact to perpetrate deception upon the unknowing public and his characters are so defined as to immediately identify the good from the evil.
He explores hidden secrets of families bringing to light the devastation resounding from a series of events too horrible for a young man to realize, let alone deal with.  Who is to say what course of action one should follow when confronted with a catastronic event that turns a life upside down.  Is there a right and wrong way to matriculate into society and become part of society?
Is there a special society that prevails among the homeless?
From reading Disappearing into View one learns that a brotherhood exists among the homeless and that each soul is responsible to one another for the events that surround them and their very survival depends on their unification.
Mr. Stone first gave us "All Flowers Die" a different story of friendships and human growth.  In Disappearing into View he brings a enlightenment to defining a society not always at it's best, but a society nevertheless.