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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.
- Sales Rank: #243316 in Books
- Published on: 2000-10-10
- Released on: 2000-10-10
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.01" h x .86" w x 5.15" l, .72 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 384 pages
Amazon.com Review
In Why They Kill, Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Rhodes traces the life and career of criminologist Lonnie Athens, a man who took his own sad and squalid life and turned it on its head to make a groundbreaking career as a criminologist. Athens grew up in a violent, angry world. Rather than absorbing the sickness and violence around him, though, he studied it, and eventually developed a theory about how violent criminals are created. Rhodes's critical examination of Athens's work forces readers to consider how violent our society really is, how it became that way, and what might be done to change it. When applied to well-known criminals such as Michael Tyson and Lee Harvey Oswald, Athens's ideas become concrete and take on an urgent tone: it's easy to discuss theories and predictors in the abstract, but these stories are real, and they repeat themselves in our society at an alarming rate. Rhodes's approach to this disturbing subject stands apart from many other crime books in its intelligence, humanity, and empathy. These are not just descriptions of "scumbags" and their brutal crimes, but intensely personal stories that reveal how a culture of violence propagates itself. --Lisa Higgins
From Publishers Weekly
What transforms an ordinary person into a violent criminal? Not genetic inheritance or low self-esteem or coming from a violent subculture, answers Pulitzer PrizeAwinning author Rhodes (The Making of the Atomic Bomb, etc.), but rather a process of brutalization by parents or peers that usually occurs in childhood. In this provocative study, Rhodes focuses on the work of criminologist Lonnie Athens, who teaches at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. Athens believes that violent crime results from "social retardation," a process whereby an individual who was abused in childhood guides his or her actions by recourse to a "phantom community" of the internalized voices of caregivers and others. Rhodes tests Athens's theory against specific cases, including those of boxer and convicted rapist Mike Tyson; Cheryl Crane, daughter of actress Lana Turner, who at age 14 stabbed to death her mother's lover; and Lee Harvey Oswald. The author champions Athens as a pioneering genius battling a criminological establishment that ascribes violent crime to psychopathology or antecedent social conditions; yet he overestimates the originality of Athens's work (the "phantom community" in some ways resembles Freud's superego), and his well-intentioned study is at times belabored. Both Rhodes and Athens suffered through horrifically abusive childhoods, which adds a compelling personal note to this study but may also color their views. Rhodes strongly endorses Athens's call for school-based prevention programs to break the cycle of domestic and societal violence. Agents, Morton Janklow and Anne Sibbald, Janklow & Nesbit Associates. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Drawing on exhaustive interviews with violent prison inmates, criminologist Lonnie Athens asserts that people do not commit violent crimes because they live in poverty, are mentally ill or on drugs, have a genetic predisposition to violence, "just snap," or have been brutalized as children (though the latter plays a part). Rather, they have undergone a four-step "violentization" process that leads them, under certain circumstances, to decide consciously to beat, rape, or kill. Together with Athens's own hardscrabble, violence-filled upbringing, this theoryAderived as it is from qualitative rather than quantitative researchAhas made his existence within the academic community difficult. Rhodes, a Pulitzer Prize winner (The Making of the Atomic Bomb) and himself a victim of childhood violence, offers a compelling look at Athens, his work, and its application to noted violent offenders, different eras and cultures, and men at war. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries.
-AJim G. Burns, Ottumwa P.L., IA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
39 of 43 people found the following review helpful.
Brilliant
By RBH
Richard Rhodes is an outstanding writer as anyone who has read "The Making of the Atom Bomb" can attest. His writing is well researched, clearly written and often hard to put down.
His latest book, " Why They Kill : The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist" is an eye opener. Criminologist, Dr. Lonnie Athens new approach to understanding violence in humans turns some psychiatric theories upside down. His discoveries originated from his own extremely violent background. Athens claims that rapists, violent killers (including serial killers) know what they are doing and why. To the majority of us it is incomprehensible that anyone would commit such heinous acts with what appears to be little or no provocation. He shows, by example, how those who have gone through what he calls the four stages of violentization, think and react.
Athens states that if an individual is interrupted at any stage before he or she has gone through the fourth stage of violentization, the individual can be reformed. However, once the fourth stage has been completed, there is no hope of redemption.
What lends a particularly reactive note on the part of the reader is the inclusion of well known personalities and their individual stories of violentization. Athens describes the backgrounds of Mike Tyson, Alex Kelly, Lee Harvey Oswald and other infamous characters. He also points out how and why soldiers were affected by the violence during the Vietnamese war and its aftermath.
Toward the end of the book Athens suggests how the cycle of violence can be broken. The cycle was broken in time for Athens and for Rhodes, who was also on his way to a violent outcome. Their redemption was serendipitous. For the majority of those who are on the road to violentization and are not so lucky, society must intervene in order to prevent the terrifying result.
24 of 26 people found the following review helpful.
A Superb New Work by a Superb Reporter
By jack olsen
I regard WHY THEY KILL as the most important book on the mind of the criminal since Dr. Hervey Cleckley's monumental study of psychopathy: THE MASK OF SANITY. Unlike self-ordained crime guru and speed-writer Joyce Carol Oates, who damned this book with her customary hauteur in the New York Times, I have been studying violent criminality at close range for 50 years, and Richard Rhodes showed me something valuable and new on every page. His ability to explicate and illuminate the most complex processes is in the tradition of great journalists like John McPhee, Gail Greene, Norman Mailer, Joseph Mitchell, Shana Alexander, James Stewart and Fox Butterfield. I hope this book gains Richard Rhodes another shelf of well-deserved awards.
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
Brilliant, timely, and urgently needed
By Maginot
This book contains the criminologist, Lonnie Athens' compelling new argument about the process that creates violent criminals. The media frequently portrays criminal violence as senseless or inexplicable, while psychology explains it with theoretical models that are incomplete and often incorrect. Athens explores the creation of violent criminals from a sociological perspective but avoids the traditional method of statistical examination. Instead, Athens takes an analytical approach by interviewing convicted violent offenders and extracting common modes of thought and behavior from their testimony. The result is a compelling theory of "violentization", which is the term Athens uses to describe the socialization that ordinary people experience before they become violent criminals.
Violentization is a process that involves several steps. Generally a person experiences brutality, humiliation, helpless exposure to someone else's victimization (personal horrorfication), violent coaching, and a violent personal revolt against real or perceived aggressors. By the time a person goes through this process the person's violent socialization is largely complete. Athens explains that socialization isn't so much a response to one's community but a response to a perceived or "phantom" community that is based on the person's experiences, memories, and recurring conversations from the past. When individuals experience violentization they develop a violent phantom community which influences their response to events in their lives. When these people resort to violent behavior they are not doing so in a senseless or medically deficient fashion, they are simply responding to a different moral framework and set of rules than individuals who haven't experienced violentization. The implication of this theory is that (1) there is a logical reason for violent behavior, and (2) the socialization of violent behavior is preventable.
"Why They Kill" offers compelling evidence to support Athens' theory. First, the author, Richard Rhodes examines the lives of several famous violent offenders and explains how they underwent the process of violentization. Even more compelling is Rhodes examination of violent behavior in different cultures throughout history. Rhodes concludes that in many historical situations and in many cultures, violent behavior was normal, and violentization was a means of preparing children to survive in a violent world. Rhodes explains that in recent history the state developed a monopoly on violence and compelled individuals to operate their daily lives in a non-violent manner through legal and cultural mechanisms. However, in many cases, this "civilizing" process has failed to take place-most notably in violent families (including Athens' and Rhodes' families), or in violent communities such as the South Bronx.
Equally as interesting is Athens' own story. Lonnie Athens grew up in an abusive household and in a violent neighborhood. His father routinely beat him and his brother but never touched his sisters. From an early age Athens developed a keen insight about violence including the fact that the behavior of abusive parents is often thoughtful and selective. Athens' father once told him that if Athens ever ran from a fight then he would beat him senseless, but if stood his ground, the father would back him up all the way. In this instance, Athens' father provided him with violent coaching. He trained his son through beatings, exposure to violence and direct training to survive in a violent world. Athens' credits his escape from the cycle of violence to the chance intervention of friends and community members and to his fortune at never having resorted to criminal violence in his youth.
Lonnie Athens' theories are some of the most powerful and compelling descriptions of human behavior I have ever encountered. In addition to providing a plausible and often provable explanation of violent behavior, they raise many questions about its prevention. For example, think of how two different religions, Christianity and Buddhism approach the subject. Christianity provides a moral framework which if properly adhered to or enforced supercedes the process of violentization (turn the other cheek, thou shall not kill). Buddhism compels people to question their perception of reality. If all attachments in life are illusory then presumably one's violent phantom community is also illusory and one can break the cycle of violence. The implications of Athens' work are both frightening and hopeful.
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