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Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist
Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb , brings his inimitable vision, exhaustive research, and mesmerizing prose to this timely book that dissects violence and offers new solutions to the age old problem of why people kill.
Lonnie Athens was raised by a brutally domineering father. Defying all odds, Athens became a groundbreaking criminologist who turned his scholar's eye to the problem of why people become violent. After a decade of interviewing several hundred violent convicts--men and women of varied background and ethnicity, he discovered "violentization," the four-stage process by which almost any human being can evolve into someone who will assault, rape, or murder another human being. Why They Kill is a riveting biography of Athens and a judicious critique of his seminal work, as well as an unflinching investigation into the history of violence.
Lonnie Athens was raised by a brutally domineering father. Defying all odds, Athens became a groundbreaking criminologist who turned his scholar's eye to the problem of why people become violent. After a decade of interviewing several hundred violent convicts--men and women of varied background and ethnicity, he discovered "violentization," the four-stage process by which almost any human being can evolve into someone who will assault, rape, or murder another human being. Why They Kill is a riveting biography of Athens and a judicious critique of his seminal work, as well as an unflinching investigation into the history of violence.
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
62 people are currently reading
1277 people want to read
About the author
Richard Rhodes
114 books617 followersRichard Lee Rhodes is an American journalist, historian, and author of both fiction and non-fiction (which he prefers to call "verity"), including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986), and most recently, Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race (2007). He has been awarded grants from the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation among others.
He is an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He also frequently gives lectures and talks on a broad range of subjects to various audiences, including testifying before the U.S. Senate on nuclear energy.
He is an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He also frequently gives lectures and talks on a broad range of subjects to various audiences, including testifying before the U.S. Senate on nuclear energy.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews
September 22, 2011
I've just finished reading the book, Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist by Richard Rhodes. It's the most thought-provoking book I've read in a long time, but it's also one of the most frustrating.
First of all, to clarify what it is. Richard Rhodes is a professional writer who came across the work of a criminologist named Lonnie Athens. So this book is written by a writer and not a sociologist. Mr. Athens has published several books on his own. This book charts both Athens' personal and professional life and his research and theories about violence. Personally, I think a lot of the flaws of the book come from the fact that it is written by someone who is not an expert in the field and doesn't have any personal knowledge of the social sciences. The parts of the book that are strongest are the telling of personal stories of violence, the actual overarching theory of the process of violentization, and the sections that apply this theory to historical time periods and war. The sections of the book that I would personally throw out are all the discussions of competing theories and all the effort into discrediting of entire fields of the social sciences like quantitative analysis and all of psyciatry. There's a lot of theoretical gobbledygook in this book, arguing about semantics of theoretical terms that ultimately have little practical use. I have a social science background and I could barely get through these sections. Ultimately, the book would be stronger if it stopped playing insider baseball and just talked about lived experience and the process of violentization.
While I'm talking about the parts I don't like, I have to deal with this book's antipathy to psychiatry. I have a psychiatric point of view, I freely admit it. I've spent a lot of time sitting and talking with people with severe mental illness and followed their treatment. I've gone into jails to interview criminals and assess their mental state. I've been responsible to making life and death decisions about whether someone needs to be hospitalized or not, whether they are a threat to themselves or others or not. And this book really pisses me off in the way it treats both psychiatry and the issue of mental illness. Honestly, the author seems to have an agenda in proving that mental illness doesn't even exist, which is patently absurd. I actually had to skip a few pages because I couldn't bear to read his discussion of how auditory hallucinations aren't a sign of mental illness because we all talk to ourselves and have voices in our head sometimes. It's such a sign of ignorance and arrogance to think that what people who are mentally ill experience is actually the same as what you experience. Trust me, it isn't. There are people who hear actual voices that actually command them to do things. There are people who actually are paranoid, in a clinical sense, and it's not just a logical result of a violent environment, but a physical sensation that they cannot control. And it doesn't mean the same thing as what you and I mean by paranoid in normal speech. These are all things that I didn't understand until I had worked closely with people with severe mental illness.
I don't disagree with anything to do with Mr. Athens' theory of violentization. I think that most people who are mentally ill and violent have gone through that process. But I do think that his methodology a priori excludes any criminals who are mentally ill. In his interviews with violent criminals, Athens throws out any case where the subject is obviously lying or saying things that are not consistent with the record of their crimes. From my experience, taking testimony from severely mentally ill individuals, I'm sure Athens would have thrown out anyone with severe mental illness. So it can't be said for certain if this process always applies to the mentally ill who are violent. I agree with the book in that I don't think that just because someone is violent that they are mentally ill. I don't think that many psychiatrists would disagree either. If violent people are sometimes given a diagnosis of mental illness and medicated when it is not warranted, I believe that is a result of the political, practical, and bureaucratic model that says that medication is necessary for people who exhibit certain behaviors and that medication can't be given without a diagnosis of certain specific disorders. And to be fair, there are some crimes that DO argue automatically to an individual's mental illness. I'm thinking of a specific case in Dallas of a woman who cut the arms off her infant child because Jesus appeared on her TV and told her to do so. It was later discovered she had a brain tumor that caused her illness, but she could have equally had an entirely mental illness based only on her crime.
But these are not the people this book discusses. The book deals with people who are habitually and repeatedly violent and how they came to be that way. The process of violentization is actually fairly simple when you strip it of theoretical gobbledygook. Stage one is brutalization, physical violence either done to the individual or done to someone close to the subject while they watched. Typically this occurs in childhood, though it can happen later. Violent coaching is another required component. Violent coaching is either explicit or implicit encouragement of violent behavior in the subject. A parent teaching their child “not to take any shit” to fight back, to make sure they seriously hurt someone in a fight, etc. It's the teaching that violence is an appropriate or the only appropriate response to certain provocations. The next stage is belligerency, when the subject decides that to prevent himself from becoming a victim again, he will use serious violence. After that comes violent performances, when the subject begins to act violently. At this stage he can either succeed or fail in his violent performances. If he succeeds, then he must gain benefits from his success at violence. People give him respect, stop subjecting him to violence, avoid him, give him fame and glory. The final stage is virulency, when the subject decides that violence is the appropriate response to even minor insults or provocations and resolves to use it early and often. An individual must go through all of these stages in order to become ultraviolent and seriously dangerous. If they turn aside at any point, they may go on to live a normal, non-violent life. But once a person completes all these stages, apparently there is nothing that will change their outlook and behavior.
Ultimately, I think this is very important work, and needs to be more widely understood and acted upon. But I wish this book was more approachable for the average person and didn't have such useless tangents.
First of all, to clarify what it is. Richard Rhodes is a professional writer who came across the work of a criminologist named Lonnie Athens. So this book is written by a writer and not a sociologist. Mr. Athens has published several books on his own. This book charts both Athens' personal and professional life and his research and theories about violence. Personally, I think a lot of the flaws of the book come from the fact that it is written by someone who is not an expert in the field and doesn't have any personal knowledge of the social sciences. The parts of the book that are strongest are the telling of personal stories of violence, the actual overarching theory of the process of violentization, and the sections that apply this theory to historical time periods and war. The sections of the book that I would personally throw out are all the discussions of competing theories and all the effort into discrediting of entire fields of the social sciences like quantitative analysis and all of psyciatry. There's a lot of theoretical gobbledygook in this book, arguing about semantics of theoretical terms that ultimately have little practical use. I have a social science background and I could barely get through these sections. Ultimately, the book would be stronger if it stopped playing insider baseball and just talked about lived experience and the process of violentization.
While I'm talking about the parts I don't like, I have to deal with this book's antipathy to psychiatry. I have a psychiatric point of view, I freely admit it. I've spent a lot of time sitting and talking with people with severe mental illness and followed their treatment. I've gone into jails to interview criminals and assess their mental state. I've been responsible to making life and death decisions about whether someone needs to be hospitalized or not, whether they are a threat to themselves or others or not. And this book really pisses me off in the way it treats both psychiatry and the issue of mental illness. Honestly, the author seems to have an agenda in proving that mental illness doesn't even exist, which is patently absurd. I actually had to skip a few pages because I couldn't bear to read his discussion of how auditory hallucinations aren't a sign of mental illness because we all talk to ourselves and have voices in our head sometimes. It's such a sign of ignorance and arrogance to think that what people who are mentally ill experience is actually the same as what you experience. Trust me, it isn't. There are people who hear actual voices that actually command them to do things. There are people who actually are paranoid, in a clinical sense, and it's not just a logical result of a violent environment, but a physical sensation that they cannot control. And it doesn't mean the same thing as what you and I mean by paranoid in normal speech. These are all things that I didn't understand until I had worked closely with people with severe mental illness.
I don't disagree with anything to do with Mr. Athens' theory of violentization. I think that most people who are mentally ill and violent have gone through that process. But I do think that his methodology a priori excludes any criminals who are mentally ill. In his interviews with violent criminals, Athens throws out any case where the subject is obviously lying or saying things that are not consistent with the record of their crimes. From my experience, taking testimony from severely mentally ill individuals, I'm sure Athens would have thrown out anyone with severe mental illness. So it can't be said for certain if this process always applies to the mentally ill who are violent. I agree with the book in that I don't think that just because someone is violent that they are mentally ill. I don't think that many psychiatrists would disagree either. If violent people are sometimes given a diagnosis of mental illness and medicated when it is not warranted, I believe that is a result of the political, practical, and bureaucratic model that says that medication is necessary for people who exhibit certain behaviors and that medication can't be given without a diagnosis of certain specific disorders. And to be fair, there are some crimes that DO argue automatically to an individual's mental illness. I'm thinking of a specific case in Dallas of a woman who cut the arms off her infant child because Jesus appeared on her TV and told her to do so. It was later discovered she had a brain tumor that caused her illness, but she could have equally had an entirely mental illness based only on her crime.
But these are not the people this book discusses. The book deals with people who are habitually and repeatedly violent and how they came to be that way. The process of violentization is actually fairly simple when you strip it of theoretical gobbledygook. Stage one is brutalization, physical violence either done to the individual or done to someone close to the subject while they watched. Typically this occurs in childhood, though it can happen later. Violent coaching is another required component. Violent coaching is either explicit or implicit encouragement of violent behavior in the subject. A parent teaching their child “not to take any shit” to fight back, to make sure they seriously hurt someone in a fight, etc. It's the teaching that violence is an appropriate or the only appropriate response to certain provocations. The next stage is belligerency, when the subject decides that to prevent himself from becoming a victim again, he will use serious violence. After that comes violent performances, when the subject begins to act violently. At this stage he can either succeed or fail in his violent performances. If he succeeds, then he must gain benefits from his success at violence. People give him respect, stop subjecting him to violence, avoid him, give him fame and glory. The final stage is virulency, when the subject decides that violence is the appropriate response to even minor insults or provocations and resolves to use it early and often. An individual must go through all of these stages in order to become ultraviolent and seriously dangerous. If they turn aside at any point, they may go on to live a normal, non-violent life. But once a person completes all these stages, apparently there is nothing that will change their outlook and behavior.
Ultimately, I think this is very important work, and needs to be more widely understood and acted upon. But I wish this book was more approachable for the average person and didn't have such useless tangents.
July 15, 2012
I bought this book originally because, as a wannabe writer trying to make my villains more believable, I thought it would help me understand...well, why they kill. What pushes a person to take another person's life.
What I learned is that all the clichés in books, movies, and TV shows are very wrong. You know the ones. He was born bad. She was a bad seed. He couldn't help it, something just made him kill all those people. She's not responsible for her actions.
Rhodes' explains Athens' theories that put all that aside and he shows how a violent offender is created, step by step. And make no bones about it, they are created, not born. And at each step along the way, there are choices made that take them down the path of violence. It's not a sudden thing. It's very gradual, and builds over many years. That's why you can have two siblings raised by the same parents in the same social situation, one of whom ends up in prison for murder and the other of whom doesn't. It's about choices. Decisions. Nothing forces a person to pick up a gun or knife or bat--or their fists and feet--and use them against another person. It's a choice.
He also covers how governments deliberately put soldiers through those steps systematically to turn their young citizens into killing machines, but then don't even attempt rehabilitation when they return from war, back to a world where violence is once again frowned on. Athens' interviews with Vietnam vets who were at My Lai and his interviews with murderers on death row are strikingly similar in many ways.
A fascinating read, and one that will stick with me. And I'm sure I'll refer back to it many times to re-familiarize myself with his theories as I develop characters for my stories who are capable of doing the things I need them to do.
What I learned is that all the clichés in books, movies, and TV shows are very wrong. You know the ones. He was born bad. She was a bad seed. He couldn't help it, something just made him kill all those people. She's not responsible for her actions.
Rhodes' explains Athens' theories that put all that aside and he shows how a violent offender is created, step by step. And make no bones about it, they are created, not born. And at each step along the way, there are choices made that take them down the path of violence. It's not a sudden thing. It's very gradual, and builds over many years. That's why you can have two siblings raised by the same parents in the same social situation, one of whom ends up in prison for murder and the other of whom doesn't. It's about choices. Decisions. Nothing forces a person to pick up a gun or knife or bat--or their fists and feet--and use them against another person. It's a choice.
He also covers how governments deliberately put soldiers through those steps systematically to turn their young citizens into killing machines, but then don't even attempt rehabilitation when they return from war, back to a world where violence is once again frowned on. Athens' interviews with Vietnam vets who were at My Lai and his interviews with murderers on death row are strikingly similar in many ways.
A fascinating read, and one that will stick with me. And I'm sure I'll refer back to it many times to re-familiarize myself with his theories as I develop characters for my stories who are capable of doing the things I need them to do.
June 8, 2010
Richard Rhodes may be my favorite non-fiction writer, due to very interesting books like this one. This book reveals to the reader the work of Lonnie Athens, who came up with, seemingly important theory regarding violent criminals and why people commit violent crimes. What Athens dose is to debunk current psychological theory in that people lose their reason, or suffer from mental illness which explains the root of violent crime. No, Athens suggests, I think rightly so that violence is usually done for rational reasons, that these acts are thought out. Rhode's describes that people MUST go through a 'violentization' process in order to develop the rationality of committing violent crimes. Utterly fascinating. Rhodes ends the book with an analysis of war crimes, most specifically the My Lai Massacre, and whether or not the performers fit within Athens' schema. This is a great book and I think that all teachers should read this book, as we are the ones who may be able to prevent the full violentization of young people. Additionally, police officers and judges would do well to read this.
On another note, this book was therapeutic for me, as through reading it, I have come to realize that I had gone through parts of the violentization process that Rhodes describes. It helps to read books that offer explanations and patterns that can be easily recognized, which in a word helps to explain the genius of Lonnie Athens.
On another note, this book was therapeutic for me, as through reading it, I have come to realize that I had gone through parts of the violentization process that Rhodes describes. It helps to read books that offer explanations and patterns that can be easily recognized, which in a word helps to explain the genius of Lonnie Athens.
March 24, 2018
Timely and relevant book although it was published in 1999. Partly biographical and partly academic, it follows the life, career and research of criminology expert Lonnie Athens, who was himself exposed to continued and profound violence throughout his younger years. He wound up interviewing known violent criminals in prisons in depth, and coming up with qualitative rather than merely quantitative data on the causes of criminal violence.
Athens identifies the precise mechanism of how humans become violent. All factors, he found, must be present for this to occur. He finds that, while violent criminals may be mentally ill, they are no more likely to be mentally ill than the rest of the population. Crimes committed for "no reason" always have reasons, although to a normal non-violent person the reasons may seem ridiculous or trivial. (He looked at me cross-eyed, so I killed him.).
Athens' studies are helpful in identifying the truly dangerous criminals that go through our justice system. Unfortunately, once they have been through the whole process of violentization, there is little evidence that rehabilitation works.
Interestingly, Athens finds no correlation between watching violence on TV and becoming a violent criminal; the author also notes and explains the difference because "child abuse" and brutalization. Being abused does not predict whether a child will become violent; going through the brutalization process, including horrification and the impressing on the mind of the need for violence in establishing one's standing, does set the child up for a violent adulthood.
The author also touches on the violentization of soldiers, explaining graphically the causes and effects of wartime atrocities such as My Lai, and talks about primitive societies, which generally have a much greater rate of homicide and violent crime than modern "civilized" society.
Athens identifies the precise mechanism of how humans become violent. All factors, he found, must be present for this to occur. He finds that, while violent criminals may be mentally ill, they are no more likely to be mentally ill than the rest of the population. Crimes committed for "no reason" always have reasons, although to a normal non-violent person the reasons may seem ridiculous or trivial. (He looked at me cross-eyed, so I killed him.).
Athens' studies are helpful in identifying the truly dangerous criminals that go through our justice system. Unfortunately, once they have been through the whole process of violentization, there is little evidence that rehabilitation works.
Interestingly, Athens finds no correlation between watching violence on TV and becoming a violent criminal; the author also notes and explains the difference because "child abuse" and brutalization. Being abused does not predict whether a child will become violent; going through the brutalization process, including horrification and the impressing on the mind of the need for violence in establishing one's standing, does set the child up for a violent adulthood.
The author also touches on the violentization of soldiers, explaining graphically the causes and effects of wartime atrocities such as My Lai, and talks about primitive societies, which generally have a much greater rate of homicide and violent crime than modern "civilized" society.
July 11, 2014
Athens is unarguably a revolutionary of criminology, providing structure to a subjective and spineless field. His theory of violentization explains trauma and the creation of violent actors in depth. Through ancient times, in war, in more violently inclined indigenous populations, his theory is proved again and again through Richard Rhodes's own findings. Frequently I found myself looking at my own life in a different light. That he did not achieve the acclamation he deserved is a shame and an insult to modern criminology.
January 24, 2016
A really good read. I would recommend this one to anyone who is trying to understand why some people become violent and dangerous and others do not. Silly moi, I thought the principles in this book were very well-known, but the criminologist -- Lonnie Athens -- who shaped them up into a systematic theory has had years of uphill battle trying to get anyone to acknowledge the obvious. That's academia for you, Lon. We everyday schmoes know you're right, so take heart.
August 18, 2007
True crime meets biography meets sociological study. Engrossing.
October 13, 2021
A fantastic and only slightly dated exploration of the life's work of Lonnie Athens, who grew up a second generation Greek immigrant with a hostile, abusive father in a poor neighborhood who had to learn to be scrappy to survive and was inundated in violence from day one. Rather than let it turn him into one of the subjects he would later study, he became a sociologist, one of the first to attempt to prove that, rather than hardwired explanations like genetics, anomie, brain injury or lead poisoning which were most endorsed at the time, the significant (and preventable) antecedent to violent criminal deviance was the process of violentization. This process, largely happening in adolescence, starts with brutalization, when child abuse is followed by personal horrification (major trauma) then mentorship by a teacher of violent behavior (such as in the military or a gang) where the offender learns that violence is a good way to solve their problems. Every time violence helps them solve a problem or is at least not punished, they become increasingly belligerent, sadistic and ruthless without intervention, eventually leading to someone capable of murder or rape. Thus, it is not nature but nurture which turns people from law abiding citizens to violent offenders in Athens' view, which has since been hybridized with the factors listed earlier (which are still contributors) into the biopsychosocial perspective on deviance. I will note that the book features excerpts of convict's description of the events that landed them in jail, as well as some particularly harrowing descriptions of historical and global child abuse toward the end, that may be disturbing to people not prepared to read them. Athens later went on to study civilization or the process where brutal and violent people can become rehabilitated on a mass scale, and unfortunately this has some pretty racist / white savior rhetoric in it which was typical of the time. Well written and fascinating treatise.
March 10, 2020
Why They Kill by Richard Rhodes is a tough, but interesting book highlighting the research of Lonnie Athens who studied criminology. This book is quite large and extremely informative. It goes very far back and shows how decisions of his family and him shaped him into a criminologist. While doing this, it also shows the difficulties of life with someone who does not have a very easy life. Another thing that the book does nicely is using evidence of previous articles or studies to reinforce a point that was stated, or use the evidence to introduce a new idea. Even though this book is relatable and good, there are some parts where it does become a struggle to read. A part that is not very to read is when there are large chunks of evidence or information in which the reader spends more time reading the said evidence than actually reading the information that the author wrote. This sometimes poses a threat to keeping a reader very much into the book but this is only in a few instances. Just because there is this small “problem” does not mean that this book is something one should not read. It goes into very much detail and also talks about what happened to Athens all throughout his life. Since Athens was a criminologist, he spent a lot of time in prisons as that was his number one source of information. Due to this time that he spent in the prisons, he has many interesting stories and past experiences which make the book one hundred times more interesting. Due to the fact that this book, Why They Kill by Richard Rhodes, has a lot of evidence, real-life experience, and actual events which occur in the book that the reader can relate to, the book honestly is pretty good as long as you can spend time reading everything at more than face value.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 21, 2018
I don’t completely buy into Lonnie Athens’s theory of criminal behavior. While I don’t think he has discovered THE truth, I think he’s discovered some truths...and his work is worth looking at.
His amanuensis, Richard Rhodes, unfortunately used some spurious sources in detailing military violence in Chapter 21. Two bear mention: Military historian Colonel S.L.A. Marshall has been outed as a fraud. Colonel David Grossman combines Marshall’s fictions with some extraordinarily sloppy research. It is a pity Rhodes used them.
Rhodes (and Athens) were too dismissive of genetics and head injury as sources of violent behavior. A huge (and increasing) amount of data supports those links.
But it’s an entertaining book, full of short biographies of people who underwent “violentization”, a word describing the process of brutalizations that contribute to violent behavior. These are simply fascinating. Louis XIII, Le Harvey Oswald, and Lonnie Athens himself.
Worth the read, definitely. It’ll stay on my shelf. I also plan on getting some of the original sources from the bibliography.
His amanuensis, Richard Rhodes, unfortunately used some spurious sources in detailing military violence in Chapter 21. Two bear mention: Military historian Colonel S.L.A. Marshall has been outed as a fraud. Colonel David Grossman combines Marshall’s fictions with some extraordinarily sloppy research. It is a pity Rhodes used them.
Rhodes (and Athens) were too dismissive of genetics and head injury as sources of violent behavior. A huge (and increasing) amount of data supports those links.
But it’s an entertaining book, full of short biographies of people who underwent “violentization”, a word describing the process of brutalizations that contribute to violent behavior. These are simply fascinating. Louis XIII, Le Harvey Oswald, and Lonnie Athens himself.
Worth the read, definitely. It’ll stay on my shelf. I also plan on getting some of the original sources from the bibliography.
December 4, 2017
Fascinating work by the great Richard Rhodes (of The Making of the Atomic Bomb series). Rhodes is a master of explaining, clearly, complex issues. The subject here is how violent criminals are created. Lonnie Athens’ work destroys many time-honored beliefs.
January 11, 2021
3.5/5 stars!
I really enjoyed this book from both a criminology and a psychology perspective. The last 100 pages definitely dragged so I skimmed a lot of it, but the first 200 pages of the book were fantastic! Definitely recommend for anyone who is interested in the process of violentization.
I really enjoyed this book from both a criminology and a psychology perspective. The last 100 pages definitely dragged so I skimmed a lot of it, but the first 200 pages of the book were fantastic! Definitely recommend for anyone who is interested in the process of violentization.
March 24, 2022
the book presented theories on criminology in a new light, one which resonated with me deeply. the history and examples presented made it for a great read. i really enjoyed it and it changed my own perspective on the subject.
August 14, 2018
Every once in a while, a person or a book comes along and answers a crucial question that people have been agonizing over for millenia. This book details how Lonny Athens brilliantly researched, investigated and build a solid theory around how and why people become viciously violent. As a therapist who specializes in trauma I can tell you he is right on. Though not the most exciting read ever, if you care about child development, schools, violence and criminality, this might be the most important book you ever read (unless you went to the source and read Athen's work directly)
April 23, 2019
biography with research cases and analysis written in. really enjoyed the conclusion too.
March 21, 2021
After reading this book I came to the realization that nobody knows. Kids need to be raised with love and gentleness, but even some of them kill. I found the author had no real solutions.
September 3, 2021
This book is eye-opening, shedding light on what some people go through in life inevitably causing them to grow into what we as a social class as evil.
October 25, 2023
A little dry (and in paperback the print is small), but once you get into it, fascinating, persuasive, and very important.
December 20, 2023
Meh.
There are a few moments where this book is fascinating, but it's badly outdated and doesn't come close to accomplishing what the title promises. Pass.
There are a few moments where this book is fascinating, but it's badly outdated and doesn't come close to accomplishing what the title promises. Pass.
June 7, 2024
Super intriguing, but there were a couple digs at Christianity that I didn’t like and a few parts were a little dry. But otherwise I really enjoyed it!
March 2, 2017
I can see why the theories are controversial
A little drag-y in the middle but overall great insight for this layman. Enjoyed it after having this recommended by a friend who was in rehab.
A little drag-y in the middle but overall great insight for this layman. Enjoyed it after having this recommended by a friend who was in rehab.
August 1, 2012
OK, let's get past the title: this book is a summary of the work and career of Lonnie Athens, whose initial studies of the process of violentization led him, in my opinion, to some ideas that are much wider in scope.
Example: Hallucinations are events that exist on a spectrum, including talking to oneself, hearing controlling voices in one's head, remembering the advice of a significant mentor, etc. They are examples of ways we interact with what Richard Rhodes sums up as our phantom community: the self is constantly experiencing events and making decisions in the context of an internal dialogue, the "soliloquy of the self." Constantly. At times of inner turmoil, we experience discord between the various speakers. In the normal course of events, we don't even notice that these conversations are taking place.
One of the important ways in which we define ourselves is by choosing the members of the "committee in our heads," and by disagreeing with the malevolent members while taking support from the nurturing members.
Like a typical faculty meeting, in other words.
Now, Rhodes doesn't spend an awful lot of the book discussing HEALTHY people and the way in which their personalities interact with this committee. And I'll grant that the subject of the creation of violent criminals, while perhaps topical and exciting, may not be everyone's cup of tea. I read about half of this book quite a while ago, and put it down. The recent cinema massacre, and the questions it brings up: "How could someone become so evil?" etc., drew me back to revisit it. Unexpectedly, the book takes a sharp turn about 250 pages in, as Athens' work takes up a broader range of human behavior.
It seems to me that Lonnie Athens' work does no less than put forth a novel, logical, and maybe even useful way of considering personality development and how we cope from day to day with the challenges and decisions of life. The fact that he does so while also developing a radical new way of thinking about justice, societal support, crime and punishment was, frankly, astonishing.
In my opinion, this is a very important book and I hope my review encourages you to read it.
I only picked the book up because I have read and enjoyed other books by Richard Rhodes. As it turns out, Rhodes and his brother underwent some of the process of violentization as children, as did Athens. If you've ever wondered why some people with shitty childhoods turn out very, very bad, while others seem to do much better, this book explains - in detail - how that happens.
Example: Hallucinations are events that exist on a spectrum, including talking to oneself, hearing controlling voices in one's head, remembering the advice of a significant mentor, etc. They are examples of ways we interact with what Richard Rhodes sums up as our phantom community: the self is constantly experiencing events and making decisions in the context of an internal dialogue, the "soliloquy of the self." Constantly. At times of inner turmoil, we experience discord between the various speakers. In the normal course of events, we don't even notice that these conversations are taking place.
One of the important ways in which we define ourselves is by choosing the members of the "committee in our heads," and by disagreeing with the malevolent members while taking support from the nurturing members.
Like a typical faculty meeting, in other words.
Now, Rhodes doesn't spend an awful lot of the book discussing HEALTHY people and the way in which their personalities interact with this committee. And I'll grant that the subject of the creation of violent criminals, while perhaps topical and exciting, may not be everyone's cup of tea. I read about half of this book quite a while ago, and put it down. The recent cinema massacre, and the questions it brings up: "How could someone become so evil?" etc., drew me back to revisit it. Unexpectedly, the book takes a sharp turn about 250 pages in, as Athens' work takes up a broader range of human behavior.
It seems to me that Lonnie Athens' work does no less than put forth a novel, logical, and maybe even useful way of considering personality development and how we cope from day to day with the challenges and decisions of life. The fact that he does so while also developing a radical new way of thinking about justice, societal support, crime and punishment was, frankly, astonishing.
In my opinion, this is a very important book and I hope my review encourages you to read it.
I only picked the book up because I have read and enjoyed other books by Richard Rhodes. As it turns out, Rhodes and his brother underwent some of the process of violentization as children, as did Athens. If you've ever wondered why some people with shitty childhoods turn out very, very bad, while others seem to do much better, this book explains - in detail - how that happens.
October 15, 2008
This book is as much a biography of the criminologist Lonnie Athens as it is an explication of his theories. Instead of just giving you the theory in one big chunk, or breaking it down into its logical components, the book takes you through it along the same path Athens took in coming up with it. That worked well for me, but it might confuse other readers.
There's also a lot of graphic violence, since Athens's own home life was brutal, and his research consisted of collecting the life histories of a bunch of violent criminals and chronicling the process of "violentization" (a portmanteau of "violent" and "socialization") they underwent. Because of that, many readers might not be able to get through this book. But for those who do, it's very illuminating.
Rhodes adds evidence corroborating Athens's theory of violentization that Athens himself never dealt with: he mines the life histories of famous historical murderers, and examines the lifestyles and child-rearing practices of primitive societies and earlier historical eras more violent than our own.
Quite apart from his revolutionary discoveries, Athens's life story is a very inspiring one. He came from a very poor, transient Greek-immigrant family, overcame abuse and an incipient aggression problem of his own and went to college, ultimately getting a PhD. Even after grad school, though, he had recurring difficulty getting a job, mostly due to his lack of the middle-class manners and social skills his colleagues and superiors expected of him. At the low point in his career, he had a PhD and had written a book that the criminology field had ignored, and he had to work in his father-in-law's auto body shop. But even in the face of such catastrophic personal failure, he kept pondering the questions that interested him, kept doing research and writing books.
There's also a lot of graphic violence, since Athens's own home life was brutal, and his research consisted of collecting the life histories of a bunch of violent criminals and chronicling the process of "violentization" (a portmanteau of "violent" and "socialization") they underwent. Because of that, many readers might not be able to get through this book. But for those who do, it's very illuminating.
Rhodes adds evidence corroborating Athens's theory of violentization that Athens himself never dealt with: he mines the life histories of famous historical murderers, and examines the lifestyles and child-rearing practices of primitive societies and earlier historical eras more violent than our own.
Quite apart from his revolutionary discoveries, Athens's life story is a very inspiring one. He came from a very poor, transient Greek-immigrant family, overcame abuse and an incipient aggression problem of his own and went to college, ultimately getting a PhD. Even after grad school, though, he had recurring difficulty getting a job, mostly due to his lack of the middle-class manners and social skills his colleagues and superiors expected of him. At the low point in his career, he had a PhD and had written a book that the criminology field had ignored, and he had to work in his father-in-law's auto body shop. But even in the face of such catastrophic personal failure, he kept pondering the questions that interested him, kept doing research and writing books.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 18, 2007
This book really got me thinking about the social 'sciences' - and their research methods.
The standard approach to this day is statistical methods/measurements. I love Lonnie Athens for his stubborness - for creating his own path to discovery.
As far as I can tell he is the first person to try to use the scientific method (definitely with some success, I might add) in the social sciences. If this is not true, if there were others - tell me, I beg you. I am truly enthralled by this concept! Also, as far as I can tell there were only one or two people, besides Richard Rhodes, who followed up on his work.
I tried to get a hold of their work, and so far all I got was 1 or 2 articles - I think from the Oxford Journal of Criminology (or something like it).
The standard approach to this day is statistical methods/measurements. I love Lonnie Athens for his stubborness - for creating his own path to discovery.
As far as I can tell he is the first person to try to use the scientific method (definitely with some success, I might add) in the social sciences. If this is not true, if there were others - tell me, I beg you. I am truly enthralled by this concept! Also, as far as I can tell there were only one or two people, besides Richard Rhodes, who followed up on his work.
I tried to get a hold of their work, and so far all I got was 1 or 2 articles - I think from the Oxford Journal of Criminology (or something like it).
June 20, 2010
Richard Rhodes is one of my favorite authors. I first encountered his work when I read The Making of the Atomic Bomb. His book, Why They Kill, is unique in my experience, in that it is a blend of both biography and sociology. It is the biography of Lonnie Athens who lived a violent life as a youth and later dedicated his life to the investigation of the source of violence in criminals. It is also a presentation of Athens' findings and an examination of the results of applying those findings to criminals who Athens had not studied. The result of this, due greatly to the writing skills of the author, is a fascinating and unique story of the sociology of criminal life and the pathology of violence. This is a challenging book for those readers interested in why some humans kill.
January 15, 2015
Rhodes covers (in far more readable fashion) the work of Lonnie Atkins, a pioneer phenomenologist of criminal behavior. Atkins’ theory is that violence is primarily created through an interaction between a young people and the abusive experiences they witness or suffer – what Atkins calls “violentization.” At first read, it seems to make perfect sense – but there is nothing in Atkins work that explains why one violent person rapes and another gets in violent fights. In my opinion, Atkins' establishes the social conditions which would tend to activate traits endemic to human beings towards violence. In a sense, he tells the story that violent people tell themselves to activate their violence. A very useful work – but not the inclusive answer to violence that it purports to be.
December 5, 2013
This book was extremely intriguing from the very beginning, especially for someone is who very interested in criminal behavior and criminology. The evidence that is presented gives a substantial chunk to chew in, and I would highly recommend this book to those interested. It may be slow or dry for those who are not hardcore interested in the subject, but the results of the information is fascinating to the enthusiasts.
I would like to read Lonnie Athens own works, instead of through another author. The author of this book did make a desperate scramble to push his own ideas in at the end. He wasn't quite successful in my opinion.
I would like to read Lonnie Athens own works, instead of through another author. The author of this book did make a desperate scramble to push his own ideas in at the end. He wasn't quite successful in my opinion.
June 4, 2016
Detailed,somwhat scholarly. This book took me a few days to read. I had to read it slowly and sometimes reread difficult to understand passages. Book proposes a new way to understand the development of the mind of a murderer. It is partly a biography of the man who developed the ideas, some historical information on violence and child rearing practices and some debunking of other explanations of the formation of killers.
I have a newer more organized understanding of the subject that I believe will increase my enjoyment of murder mysteries.
I have a newer more organized understanding of the subject that I believe will increase my enjoyment of murder mysteries.
August 4, 2011
The first part describing Athens, the criminologist, and his theory was the slowest. Athens did have an interesting life, but it went on too long. The theories and papers described were not summarized for the layperson. It read very academically, and I found that frustrating.
The middle section was the most interesting. The author looked at records of historically violent people and applied Athens theory to them.
Overall I liked it, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it strongly.
The middle section was the most interesting. The author looked at records of historically violent people and applied Athens theory to them.
Overall I liked it, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it strongly.
April 10, 2013
Written by Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Rhodes. Very engrossing and thoroughly researched....changed many of my preconceptions about the origins of violence. Also details how our human ethics are exploited by organizations such as the military. Also highlights how Vets are victims of broken contracts between themselves and the government...and sometimes deliberate sabotage by their own leaders. On my short list of must read books!
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