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An End to Murder: A Criminologist's View of Violence Throughout History
Human beings have always been cruel, savage, and murderous. Is that all about to change?
Human history can be seen as a catalog of coldhearted murders, mindless blood feuds, appalling massacres, and devastating wars. Creatively and intellectually, there is no other species that has ever come close to equaling humanity’s achievements, but neither is any other species as suicidally prone to internecine conflict. We are the only species on the planet whose ingrained habit of conflict and perpetual warfare constitutes the chief threat to our own survival.
In An End to Murder , the Wilsons assess whether human beings are in reality as cruel and violent as is generally believed. The book explores the possibility that humankind is on the verge of a fundamental that we are about to become truly civilized. Covering a wide-reaching history of violence from the first hominids to the twenty-first century, the book touches on key moments of change while also indicating where things have not changed since the Stone Age. It follows the history of violence from fifteenth-century baron Gilles de Rais (“Bluebeard”), the first known and possibly most prolific serial killer in history; to Victorian domestic murder, the invention of psychiatry, Sherlock Holmes, and the invention of forensic science; the fifteenth-century Taiping Rebellion in China, in which more than twenty million died; World Wars I and II; more recent genocides and instances of “ethnic cleansing”; and contemporary terrorism.
As well as offering an overview of violence throughout our history, the authors explore the latest psychological, forensic, and social attempts to understand and curb modern human violence.
Human history can be seen as a catalog of coldhearted murders, mindless blood feuds, appalling massacres, and devastating wars. Creatively and intellectually, there is no other species that has ever come close to equaling humanity’s achievements, but neither is any other species as suicidally prone to internecine conflict. We are the only species on the planet whose ingrained habit of conflict and perpetual warfare constitutes the chief threat to our own survival.
In An End to Murder , the Wilsons assess whether human beings are in reality as cruel and violent as is generally believed. The book explores the possibility that humankind is on the verge of a fundamental that we are about to become truly civilized. Covering a wide-reaching history of violence from the first hominids to the twenty-first century, the book touches on key moments of change while also indicating where things have not changed since the Stone Age. It follows the history of violence from fifteenth-century baron Gilles de Rais (“Bluebeard”), the first known and possibly most prolific serial killer in history; to Victorian domestic murder, the invention of psychiatry, Sherlock Holmes, and the invention of forensic science; the fifteenth-century Taiping Rebellion in China, in which more than twenty million died; World Wars I and II; more recent genocides and instances of “ethnic cleansing”; and contemporary terrorism.
As well as offering an overview of violence throughout our history, the authors explore the latest psychological, forensic, and social attempts to understand and curb modern human violence.
- GenresTrue CrimeNonfiction
592 pages, Hardcover
First published January 6, 2015
45 people are currently reading
137 people want to read
About the author
Colin Wilson
403 books1,291 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Colin Henry Wilson was born and raised in Leicester, England, U.K. He left school at 16, worked in factories and various occupations, and read in his spare time. When Wilson was 24, Gollancz published The Outsider (1956) which examines the role of the social 'outsider' in seminal works of various key literary and cultural figures. These include Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, William James, T. E. Lawrence, Vaslav Nijinsky and Vincent Van Gogh and Wilson discusses his perception of Social alienation in their work. The book was a best seller and helped popularize existentialism in Britain. Critical praise though, was short-lived and Wilson was soon widely criticized.
Wilson's works after The Outsider focused on positive aspects of human psychology, such as peak experiences and the narrowness of consciousness. He admired the humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow and corresponded with him. Wilson wrote The War Against Sleep: The Philosophy of Gurdjieff on the life, work and philosophy of G. I. Gurdjieff and an accessible introduction to the Greek-Armenian mystic in 1980. He argues throughout his work that the existentialist focus on defeat or nausea is only a partial representation of reality and that there is no particular reason for accepting it. Wilson views normal, everyday consciousness buffeted by the moment, as "blinkered" and argues that it should not be accepted as showing us the truth about reality. This blinkering has some evolutionary advantages in that it stops us from being completely immersed in wonder, or in the huge stream of events, and hence unable to act. However, to live properly we need to access more than this everyday consciousness. Wilson believes that our peak experiences of joy and meaningfulness are as real as our experiences of angst and, since we are more fully alive at these moments, they are more real. These experiences can be cultivated through concentration, paying attention, relaxation and certain types of work.
Colin Henry Wilson was born and raised in Leicester, England, U.K. He left school at 16, worked in factories and various occupations, and read in his spare time. When Wilson was 24, Gollancz published The Outsider (1956) which examines the role of the social 'outsider' in seminal works of various key literary and cultural figures. These include Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, William James, T. E. Lawrence, Vaslav Nijinsky and Vincent Van Gogh and Wilson discusses his perception of Social alienation in their work. The book was a best seller and helped popularize existentialism in Britain. Critical praise though, was short-lived and Wilson was soon widely criticized.
Wilson's works after The Outsider focused on positive aspects of human psychology, such as peak experiences and the narrowness of consciousness. He admired the humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow and corresponded with him. Wilson wrote The War Against Sleep: The Philosophy of Gurdjieff on the life, work and philosophy of G. I. Gurdjieff and an accessible introduction to the Greek-Armenian mystic in 1980. He argues throughout his work that the existentialist focus on defeat or nausea is only a partial representation of reality and that there is no particular reason for accepting it. Wilson views normal, everyday consciousness buffeted by the moment, as "blinkered" and argues that it should not be accepted as showing us the truth about reality. This blinkering has some evolutionary advantages in that it stops us from being completely immersed in wonder, or in the huge stream of events, and hence unable to act. However, to live properly we need to access more than this everyday consciousness. Wilson believes that our peak experiences of joy and meaningfulness are as real as our experiences of angst and, since we are more fully alive at these moments, they are more real. These experiences can be cultivated through concentration, paying attention, relaxation and certain types of work.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 4, 2016
Wow! This is a remarkable book about crime.I would encourage anyone who is interested in this subject to read this book. It looks at crime from our primal roots to our modern times. They take a look at many things that have had an influence on our violent history and why there is hope for us becoming less violent in the future. Wonderful book!
December 27, 2017
Книга не варта витраченого на неї часу! Відповіді на основне питання - причини зниження вбивств та насилля в сучасному світі - не прозвучало. Книга ділиться на 2 дуже різні частини, перша написала сином, друга батьком, бо батько помер під час роботи над цією книгою. Якщо у першій частині ще хоч сторінок на 20 можна вижати цікавої аналітичної інформації стосовно насилля в історії, розвитку людських цивілізацій і тд, то друга частина взагалі розчарувала - це наведення великої кількості випадків із практики кримінолога, з дуже незначною аналітичною інфрормацією щодо причин цих явищ. Не рекомендую!
October 18, 2022
eBook formatting drove me crazy.
John Wayne Gacy Junior operated in Illinois, not Texas.
Otherwise, this book is excellent.
John Wayne Gacy Junior operated in Illinois, not Texas.
Otherwise, this book is excellent.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews