The Beast Within: Why Men Are Violent [Hardcover]

Neil Boyd (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2000

What causes male violence...and how can we stop it? A sure-to-be-controversial, challenging, and provocative study suggests that biology plays a definitive role in engendering murder, rape, torture, and other vicious acts. To understand brutality, start with the animal world, where males use aggression to ensure the survival of the species and their primacy within the group. Uncover testosterone's powerful effects, and the connection between the number of teenage boys in the population and patterns of violence. Environmental factor do have an effect too, influencing a person's ability to handle anger. Most important of all, because biology is not destiny, here is the key to reducing lethal aggression, as well as ways to manage the root of this evil.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Neil Boyd was born in Deep River, Ontario, and educated at the University of Western Ontario and Osgoode Hall Law School. He has been a professor of Criminology since 1989, and has written books on drug use and murder. In 1990, he received the AAMTEC Best Education Video in Canada, Award for Excellence for The Last Dance: Murder in Canada.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre (August 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1550547666
• ISBN-13: 978-1550547665
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,496,835 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A well-balanced survey, May 6, 2008

By 

Paul Magnussen (Campbell, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Beast Within: Why Men Are Violent (Paperback)

"Basically, if everyone has a vested interest in believing that they understand everything, or even that people are capable in principle of understanding it (either because believing this dampens their insecurities about the unpredictable world, or makes them feel more intelligent than others, or both) then you have an environment in which dopey, reductionist, simple-minded, pat, glib thinking can circulate, like wheelbarrows filled with inflated currency in the marketplaces of Jakarta."

There are few areas where this observation* is more apposite than that of criminology. The author is a criminologist of considerable experience -- but this is not, unfortunately, a sufficient guarantee that pronouncements about criminal psychology will not be twaddle. It was thus somewhat of a relief to find this book perfectly sensible.

Why, then, *are* men violent? By the end of this opus, there is still no definitive answer -- but that, in fact, is a large part of its value: it disposes of the usual simplistic replies ("testosterone", "the patriarchal society", etc.) by adducing research that shows them to be untenable. Many possible factors are considered, and I found the discussion quite well informed and interesting.

So when you get to the end, you may not know what The Answer is; but you could have a much better idea of what it isn't.

Well worth a look, in my opinion.

*from Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon