Customer Reviews

The Beast Within: Why Men Are Violent

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"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