Equation for Evil [Paperback]

Philip Caputo (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Harper; First Printing edition (January 1, 1997)
• ASIN: B001INMVC8
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Novelist and journalist Philip Caputo (1941 -- ) was born in Chicago and educated at Purdue and Loyola Universities. After graduating in 1964, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps for three years, including a 16-month tour of duty in Vietnam. He has written 14 books, including two memoirs, four books of general nonfiction, and eight novels. His acclaimed memoir of Vietnam, A Rumor of War, has been published in 15 languages, has sold over 1.5 million copies since its publication in 1977, and is widely regarded as a classic in the literature of war. His most recent novel, Crossers, is set against a backdrop of drug and illegal-immigrant smuggling on the Mexican border and is to be published in the Fall of 2009 by Alfred A. Knopf. In addition to books, Caputo has published dozens of major magazine articles, reviews, and op-ed pieces in publications ranging from the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the Washington Post to Esquire, National Geographic, and the Virginia Quarterly Review. Topics included profiles of novelist William Styron and actor Robert Redford, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the turmoil on the Mexican border.

Caputo's professional writing career began in 1968, when he joined the staff of the Chicago Tribune, serving as a general assignment and team investigative reporter until 1972. For the next five years, he was a foreign correspondent for that newspaper, stationed in Rome, Beirut, Saigon, and Moscow. In 1977, he left the paper to devote himself to writing books and magazine articles.


Caputo has won 10 journalistic and literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 (shared for team investigative reporting on vote fraud in Chicago), the Overseas Press Club Award in 1973, the Sidney Hillman Foundation award in 1977 (for A Rumor of War), the Connecticut Book Award in 2006, and the Literary Lights Award in 2007. His first novel, Horn of Africa, was a National Book Award finalist in 1980, and his 2007 essay on illegal immigration won the Blackford Prize for nonfiction from the University of Virginia.

He and his wife, Leslie Ware, an editor for Consumer Reports magazine, divide their time between Connecticut and Arizona. Caputo has two sons from a previous marriage, Geoffrey, a jazz composer and music teacher, and Marc, a political reporter for the Miami Herald.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Rewarding Read, February 15, 2000

By 

Mark K. Mcdonough "Mark McDonough" (Reston, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Equation for Evil: A Novel (Paperback)

This one certainly doesn't deserve to be out of print. Loosely based on the story of Stockton, CA mass murderer Patrick Purdy, Equation for Evil is an excellent read. Caputo must have done some reading in neuroscience before writing the novel, but I got the feeling that he couldn't quite figure out where to go with the book's central theme -- whether the roots of evil are spiritual, biological, or both. Much is made of this issue in the first half of the novel, but it sort of fades out towards the end as the book takes on the shape of a conventional thriller. One of the book's major characters, psychiatrist Leander Heartwood, rather unconvincingly sheds his belief that the roots of violent behavior are in the brain and decides that evil is "a choice." Perhaps so, but the choice to open fire on a group of schoolchildren is not one that most of us would remotely contemplate, leaving the question of what makes people like Purdy tick hanging.

Having done some reading and writing about neuroscience issues myself, I can empathize with Caputo's confusion, but research conducted in the years since this book was published has drawn even stronger connections between neurological abnormalities and violent behavior. I have spent a great deal of time thinking about the implications of all this and remain somewhat baffled. Seems like Mr. Caputo had a similar reaction.

6 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Crude, One-Sided, A Real Disappointment, December 29, 2003

By 

Lily Bart "lilybits" (The House of Mirth) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Equation for Evil: A Novel (Paperback)

As a young Marine I, like countless others in the Corps, read Caputo's memoir A RUMOR OF WAR and was deeply impressed by his courage under fire and his complete honesty as a reporter. Years later, I picked up EQUATION FOR EVIL hoping it would be equally compelling.

What a disappointment! This story of a serial killer is slow and predictable, but what really makes the book a chore to read is the crude, heavy-handed nature of Caputo's moralization on the nature of evil. With no sense of irony and no sense of history, Caputo repeats over and over that evil is a "choice" and that modern man has lost his moral "compass" through to much excess, permissiveness, and mass-media sex and violence. These thoughts come from his protagonist, Heartwood, a man trained by Catholic Jesuit priests who is no longer a practicing Catholic but who retains a deep and unquestioning loyalty to his mentors, the elite Jesuits.

The murder of a handful of Asian children on a bus is supposed to be decisive proof that modern man has somehow lost his way. But when medieval Europe was firmly under the control of the Catholic church Jewish children were murdered in much larger numbers over a period of centuries! The crimes of the Catholic church throughout the centuries are far more horrendous than any of the media sex and violence Heartwood deplores in this novel. Moreover, his authoritarian nonsense about religion providing a "compass" falls apart in the face of the real corruption and evil that has always existed within the church hierarchy.

It is worth noting that there is not one single Jewish character in this novel, not one person who could challenge Caputo's ignorance about the history of his own church. Caputo ignores the Crusades, the Inquisition, the religious violence of the Reformation, and three centuries of the African slave trade -- all horrific crimes against humanity committed with the express written consent of the Catholic church. He actually has the effrontery to suggest that modern crimes prove man cannot survive without "guidance" like that provided by the vicious, murderous, destructive Catholic church of the medieval world. The only real villains in this novel are scientists, intellectuals, and Jews -- in that order. Caputo reserves special venom for Sigmund Freud, who was both a scientist and a Jew, and whose teachings on sex undermine the repressive policies of the Catholic church. But at least Sigmund Freud never burned any Catholics at the stake.

The hypocisy of this book is evident on every page. On a visit to Los Angeles in search of a teen runaway, the smug Heartwood refers to Hollywood as "the Vatican of illusions." Does the Vatican stand for truth? The truth that Jews are the killers of Christ? That blacks are inferior? That Protestants burn in hell? That the sun moves around the earth? In what exact way is the Vatican superior to Hollywood?

This book is an offense against tolerance and truth.