Author:Jonathan Glover
This book is about history and morality in the twentieth century. It is about the psychology which made possible Hiroshima, the Nazi genocide, the Gulag, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and many other atrocities.
In modern technological war, victims are distant and responsibility is fragmented. The scientists making the atomic bomb thought that they were only providing a weapon: how it was used was to be the responsibility of society. The people who dropped the bomb were only obeying orders. The machinery of the political decision-taking was so complex that no one among the politicians was unambiguously responsible. No one thought of themselves as causing the horrors of Hiroshima.
Jonathan Glover examines tribalism: how, in Rwanda and in the former Yugoslavia, people who once lived together became trapped into mutual fear and hatred. He investigates how, in Stalin's Russia, Mao's China and in Cambodia, systems of belief made atrocities possible. The analysis of Nazism explores the emotionally powerful combination of tribalism and belief which enabled people to commit acts otherwise unimaginable.
Drawing on accounts of participants, victims and observers, Jonathan Glover shows that different atrocities have common patterns which suggest weak points in our psychology. The resulting picture is used as a guide for the ethics we should create if we hope to overcome them. The message is not one of pessimism or despair: only by looking closely at the monsters inside us can we undertake the project of caging and taming them.
Superbly argued, and always accessible, Humanity is an essential guide to modern catastrophe. Few books interrogate our recent moral history so directly or profoundly, or provide such a civilized analysis of the never-ending atrocity exhibition.
—— Ian Thomson , Independent on SundayJonathan Glover's Humanity deserves classic status and the widest readership.
—— Edward Pearce , History TodayA stimulating new book... written with understanding and exceptional lucidity... Glover's analysis is thoughtful and penetrating.
—— Noel Malcolm , Sunday TelegraphHighly readable and accomplished.
—— Bryan Appleyard , Sunday TimesA book which as many people as possible ought to read... An indispensable work of reference.
—— Samuel Brittan , ProspectFascinating and engaging
—— Sunday TimesYour One Wild and Precious Life . . . will transform your thinking
—— Irish Farmers JournalIt reframed so much for me
—— Aoibhín GarrihyThe rotund nature of the work makes it feel like a foundational text, accessible to anyone who seeks to know more about themselves and something any trainee psychologist would enjoy. It astutely examines how attachments to people or patterns can speed up, stunt or spark our growth, and, most importantly, what we can do about it.
No matter where you locate yourself in this book there's an energy to the prose that makes it a fascinating read.
But if every love story is a ghost story, as David Foster Wallace says, then Gaffney's new book resurrects your original love story and the ghost that it conjures. She provides instructions on how to vanquish the past and understand connection, so a new cycle of living is possible.
This book is a powerful reminder that history does not have to dictate our future if we can, somehow, amid the chaos of life, listen now and again.
This book is a practical guide to making the most of our lives, within a revised framework, at every stage.
—— Anne Cunningham , The Anglo-CeltGaffney invariably gets to the core of things and always seems to talk to one directly. If she has a recipe for facing the next stage in life, it's going to be one worth trying
—— Orna Mulcahy , The GlossAn expertly organised tour through life
—— Irish Times
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