Evil: The Science Behind Humanity’s Dark Side

Evil is one of the most fundamental concepts in human culture. Many of our stories revolve around the battle of good and evil. We paint our enemies, our rivals, and those who are different from us as evil. Plenty of religions are happy to cast aside entire groups of people as evil. But what is evil, really? What does it mean? What makes a person evil?

Those are far harder questions to answer than you might think. After all, delving into cultural, historical, and even scientific parameters to try to define “evil” takes you to some very dark places. But Julia Shaw doesn’t shrink from that harrowing challenge.

In Evil, Shaw examines actions and ideas often deemed to be evil and tries to get to the root of them, their origins, how they work, and why they affect us. She asks incredibly difficult questions—even pondering how “evil” plays into acts of murder and pedophilia—and seeks to quantify and truly understand what makes something evil.

This book isn’t an easy read. Whole chapters are upsetting. But it’s an incredibly worthwhile read nonetheless. It will make you question not just what you consider evil, but how you frame such moral declarations in the first place.