Customer Reviews

The Evil 100

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The editors of this book have put together a list of 100 undoubtedly evil people (mostly men, but including poisoner Catherine de Medici and real-life vampiress Elizabeth Bathory as well as one or two other women)distilled down to 2-3-page summaries covering their lives, their actions, and usually a little bit about their motivations, though frequently these are facile one-sentence comments such as "infidels cannot be allowed to live." Most notable are the frequently lurid descriptions of the actions of these people, some of which, such as the uncensored reprinting of mocking (and graphic)letters murderer Albert Fish wrote to the parents of two children he had killed, cooked, and eaten, are not for the easily sickened. Though body count and continuing influence are important factors, the editors also use a somewhat nebulous "glee factor" and the depravity of a subject's action when determining rank.

The usual suspects among this world's tyrants and democides top the list (Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and so on, as well as terrorist bin Laden and a group listing for the tyrannical Taliban), but after about 30 it quickly shifts to a list of mass murderers, including the well-known (Dahmer, Bundy, Manson, Gacy, Berkowitz), the not-as-well-known (satanist Richard Ramirez, white-hater Mark Essex), and the unknown (The Boston Strangler, Jack the Ripper). Places on the list also go to Columbine shooters Harris and Klebold and a general listing for computer virus writers.

Some villains of the medieval period rank surprisingly highly, Genghis Khan, Attila, and Ivan the Terrible all appear among the top 10. Though Khan, who conquered most of Asia in a very brutal manner, probably deserves to be there, and perhaps Ivan, who set a pattern for repressive government in Russia also does, but Attila, brutal as he was, was largely unrealized possibility, for after his defeat at Chalons the odds of his dominating Europe vanished if ever they were there, and I question the high ranking of such an ephemeral person. Likewise highly rated is Basil the Bulgar-slayer, who blinded 14,000 captured prisoners, but was no more a tyrant than most to sit on the throne in Constantinople. One crime, it appears, can sometimes vault one very high on the list, though it may not have tremendous influence. Enver Pasha and Talat Pasha, who engineered the genocide of the Armenians in the Turkish Empire, share a high spot on the list, certainly merited, although none of the sultans appear.

That leads to the question of whether the editors of this book cast their nets wide enough, and turned too quickly to lurid and perhaps topical 20th century murderers to fill out the list. Though no one can deny what the Columbine shooters did was both insane and evil, they were essentially bullied kids who hit back much too hard. No one can also deny that virus writers cause many problems, but almost never death. Yet both are mentioned. Castro, however, is not, nor are Nicolae Ceacescu, Enver Hoxha, nor almost any of the other Cold War dictators, many of whom were even worse to their own people than any Communist ruler save Hitler and Mao. Chile's Pinochet makes the list, but not his counterpart in Argentina Juan Peron, of the days of helicopters departing full over the seas and returning empty and other "disappearances." Saddam Hussein makes the list, but not his opponent Ayatollah Khomeini, who sent Iranian teenagers in human-wave attacks against Iraqi tanks and bombers. Mithridates of Pontus, who murdered 100,000 Romans, and Francisco Lopez, who led the nation of Paraguay into a triple-front war in the 1800s that reduced his own population from 1,400,000 to 229,000 and killed 1,000,000 Argentinians, Brazilians, and Uruguayans, all in the name of megalomania, get no mention at all. Likewise, terrorists Yasser Arafat, Jomo Kenyatta, who led the vicious Mau Mau movement in Kenya, and Roger Casement, father of the IRA, get no mention at all.

In sum, although the book paints a very good picture of 100 evil people, it is by no means complete or comprehensive.

So the assassin of Garfield warrants a place among the most evil human beings to walk this planet, but the murderer of Gandhi does not? To be fair I'm not sure either individual should be included in this terribly flawed book, but one was a rather insignificant politician, the other freed his nation from imperialist bondage. Then again, Gandhi wasn't an American so perhaps his death is less significant in the eyes of this particular author.

Many of the choices of evil individuals the author makes in this book are arbitrary at best, and many individuals are included simply because of the lurid and sensasionalistic details of their crimes. For example, Ed Gein was clearly insane and should not be included with people who understood the implications of their crimes, yet choose to commit them anyways, yet he's included among the great "evils" of the world because of the... well... exotic nature of his crimes related to already dead women; while not intending to minimize his actual murders, he is known to have killed only one woman - perhaps three - hardly worthy of inclusion in a book of "pure evil." I'm still shocked that this author would seriously include the creators of computer viruses as being in the 100th most "evil" person(s) in history.

In addition to sometimes very poor choices, the quality of the writing is very poor. (...) There are times he simply repeats the exact thing he wrote a paragraph or two before. (...) There are also times when one isn't sure who the author is refering to in a story. What "he" are you taliking about? The subject of the story? A victim?

Far be it for me to tell potntial purchasers of this book how they should spend their money. Suffice it to say, though, that I received my copy as a gift, and I still think I spent too much on it.

This book is a good book, but there are a lot of people who that are not in this book that should be in there. Nevertheless, this book is good at describing the crimes that these people committed. If you like good descriptions of the crimes, torture, and murders people do, you will enjoy this book.

There are many things wrong with this book as a list, and as a discussion of the problem of evil. But consider just one thing. This is a collection of malefactors that Islamic fanatics would approve of. Of course Osama Bin Laden makes number 8, and so do the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. But that's to be expected from Americans. But how could they not admire a book in which 46 of the world's most evil people come from the United States? When you add people from Britain, Australia and Canada you get a solid majority from the Anglo-American world. And so many of their crimes involve sexual perversity and anonymous murder, which clearly trumps religious bigotry and systematic injustice in the author's scale of evils. Basically this is a book that starts off with the most infamous tyrants (Hitler is number one), and after the first twenty and thirty places, goes on to discuss mass murderers and serial killers. The four Presidential assassins are included, and the book rounds out with the Marquis De Sade and virus writers. Aside from inadvertently giving aid to comfort to America's enemies by suggesting it has, if not a monopoly of evil, controlling interest in it, the book is superficial and unpleasant to read. The book combines a shallow moralism with a lurid interest in their subject's atrocities, a sort of pornography for Republicans. The moral questions are not really addressed. For a start many of the book's subjects are patently insane, even by the strict and pro-Prosecutor guidelines of Anglo-American law. Is it useful to describe as evil someone who does not have the capacity for moral choice, or which is constrained by severe psychological problems? Sure, says the author. It doesn't matter that Martin Bryant, the Tasmanian mass murderer had an IQ of 66 or that Caligula may have been suffering from schizophrenia or epilepsy.

Reading the earlier entries one wondered how many of the charges against Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Ivan IV (the Terrible) or Vlad III (the Impaler, who makes the top 10) are actually true or are just propaganda. Good question, since Vlad III's status rests more on the idea that he was the inspiration for Dracula. The suspicion increases when the entry on Hussein starts by blaming him for the anthrax mailings in the fall of 2001, something which he clearly was not responsible for. The historical analysis is not very deep. Salvador Allende was not a Communist. There is no good reason for having Eichmann appear before Himmler, his superior, nor did he have to face 15 charges at Nuremberg. The book overstates the severity and intensity of the persecution of Christians as a result of Nero, while at the time ignoring his destruction of Jerusalem. Likewise Tojo's treatment of American POWs gets more condemnation than the way the treated the rest of Asia. Mussolini's worst acts, his African atrocities, get little space. And there is much that is missing. Neither Khomenei or the Shah appear; the African slave trade is completely ignored, and so is apartheid. Idi Amin Dada appears, but the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide are missed. The Belgian Rulers who may have caused the deaths of 15 million Congolese in their occupation of the country are forgotten. The whole bloody subjugation of the Western hemisphere goes unmentioned, so there is nothing on how Pizarro managed to destroy and enslave an entire civilization out of sheer greed. The Thirty Years War, the Crusades, the conquest of Ireland, the suppression of the Dutch Revolt are all ignored. If Stalin's and Mao's famines are to be condemned what about the Irish potato famine or the (several) Bengal famines? Mobuto, Suharto, D'Aubisson, Stroessener and the rulers of Guatemala get no mention. Nor, needless to say, do Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If Garfield's assasin deserves an entry, shouldn't Gandhi's? (Or for that matter the assassins of Indira or Rajiv Gandhi?) Charles Guiteau was just a disgruntled office seeker and Garfield a mediocre politician. The assassins of Gandhi, Luxembourg, Jaures, Rabin, King, Barthou, Bloch, Milk and Moscone were fascists or something close to it. And what about the judicial murder of Thomas More or Margaret Pole? McKinley's conquest of the Philippines involved many atrocities and the death of one in seven Filipinos. Shouldn't he rank higher than his killer?

The book is clearly not the most reliable source, but reliability is hard to come by when authors are dealing with biographies of some lunatics like Gaskins, Dahmer, and so on. In fact, there are so many sources online that will contradict another source three more times.
As far as the book, the set up is easy. It is a page turner. I found it to be extremely entertaining. Partially, I am giving this book good review because I was not looking for detailed specifics. You cannot ever do. The Evil 100 is just like some of these books that you read about kids who kill their parents, or kids who kill. Unreliable, but fiction-like entertaining.
I recommend it for a good entertaining read and as a good first time reference/direction. It is as addictive as wikipedia despite its unreliable information.

I can't figure out who this extremely weak book is aimed at. As a serious discussion of evil -- something I held out hope for until a couple of minutes after I cracked open the cover -- it is far too superficial and haphazard. A light and fun treatment of the subject? Um, doesn't writing something about evil preclude that tact?

Instead, we're left with an an almost random list of people who, at the highest levels, are responsible for some truly atrocious events (Adolph Hitler is first; Ossama bin Laden eighth), then eroding into a list of rapists, assassins, and serial killers at the middle levels, before concluding with the world's most famous sexual fetishist (the Marquis De Sade) and a couple of computer virus writers. Almost half of the evildoers are from the U.S.; almost all are men.

None of this is to belittle the horrible to nasty things these people did, though it could be argued that the format of this book does that. The whole concept is similar to learning about food by writing about the hundred most tasty meals ever prepared, or discussing parenting by ranking the hundred best-behaved children ever to be potty trained. It's absurd. Much more interesting would have been an investigation into what kind of psychology makes people evil, or of historical trends regarding the subject.

But there are other problems:

--How do you rank kinds of evil? The whole process requires some kind of formula based on how much persecution is worth how many murders, that the murder of anonymous masses is worth more or less than a high degree of sexual perversion, a lack of sanity, or a low IQ, and puts a ratio on how much property damage is worth a human life.

--Also, how good is the history this information in based on? Comparing the well-documented evils of Nazi leaders with the myth of someone like Vlad The Impaler, the historical character that Count Dracula is based on who is ranked in the top ten and who may or may not have existed ... well, you see the point, which is made over and over again.

--There are many factual errors. The number of dead listed for the battle of Antietam is actually the number of men killed, injured, or missing. Chilean dictator Salvador Allende was not a Communist. And no serious commentator has blamed Iraq's Sadam Hussein for the anthrax attacks in the U.S. in 2001. There are many more examples.

--Then, as with any top 100 compilation, what about those left off the list? Africa and Latin America are woefully underrepresented. What about the perpetrators of apartheid in South Africa or of the African slave trade? Or Fransisco Pizarro, who destroyed the great Inca capital of Cusco and killed tens of thousands of natives so he could send their gold and silver home, to the smelters of Sevilla? What about Abamael Guzman, the founder of Latin Americas bloodiest rebel group, or Alfredo Stroessener, who ran Paraguay as a haven for ex-Nazis and who left his country a generation behind most of the rest of the continent?

In the end, the book's limited value is as a collection of mini biographies of despicable characters aimed at the small niche of people interested in rubber necking at an almost random collection of people who left a negative mark on history. For anything beyond that, this book is not up to the task.

This book is not reliable for sources or anything else, for that matter. I have not read it, but I know. I was doing a Google Book search on Benito Mussolini and I came to the first page of this book, and it states Mussolini was born in 1893. This is incorrect. He was born in 1883. I don't know if this was just bad editing or horrible fact-checking on the author's part, but having seen this I cannot say I would trust any other parts of this publication.

After reading the first half-dozen entries and skimming the rest, the summaries are not as concise as they could be and some entries are questionable. The most obvious one:
John Wilkes Booth makes the list of most evil (number 94), but Linconln should be there instead. Lincoln is primarily responsible for the deaths of 620,000 people because he could have simply allowed the Confederate states to have their independence. Instead, he launched a military invasion, allowed the demolition of cities which caused starvation and disease. He imprisoned thousands of people simply because they were sympathetic to the Confederacy, leaving them jailed indefinitely, without access to attorneys or a listing of charges against them. He shut down many newspapers and confisticated telegraph companies. He refused to meet with Confederate delegations during the war, which could have resulted in a compromise. The South was justified in seeking relief from the unfair tax burden and their decreasing representation in the senate and house. The constitution and other laws effectively permitted secession. Lincoln was not really anti-slavery and slavery was dying out throughout the Americas anyway (it ended in Brazil, in 1888).
Also, referring to the Civil War battle of Antietam, 22,000 was not the number killed. It was the number of casualties (dead, wounded and missing).