Hannah Arendt prophesied in 1945 that “the problem of evil” would haunt the postwar era. She anticipated that her conceptualization of evil as radical, and later as banal, would help the postwar generation understand and confront totalitarian evil. Arendt was silent, however, on how total wars created a perfect landscape for unhindered evil. She ignored how, in World War II—and earlier, during the Napoleonic conflicts and World War I—the distinction between combatant and civilian became blurred at best and meaningless at worst.¹ Theorists of evil would need to ponder hard about how the widespread bombing of civilians—whether...

An artillery barrage around 7 A.M. on 16 March 1968 pierced the calm, clear morning around the Vietnamese hamlets collectively known as My Lai.¹ About twenty minutes later, nine American choppers set down near a rice paddy. Soldiers from three platoons hurried out and tried to form a defensive position around the landing zone. They anticipated a major confrontation with battle-hardened North Vietnamese army regulars and a Vietcong battalion.² Instead, they encountered only women, children, and old men. This was surprising, since the soldiers had been told the women and children would be at the market that morning, away from...

That it happened on 2 April 1960 is both significant and chilling. An effigy with a half-white, half-black face hanged from the stoplight and confronted commuters traveling along the main street running through Mansfield, Texas. Everyone in town knew the effigy was meant to represent and to intimidate local resident John Howard Griffin. A few days earlier, residents learned from a story in Time magazine that Griffin had darkened his skin and traveled through parts of the South as a black man. During his journey, he had been subjected to a host of abuses. But what haunted him most was...

Max Jensen’s summer job in 1976 was as an attendant at a Sinclair gas station in Orem, Utah. It was unexciting work but necessary to pay the bills. He worked the 3 to 11 P.M. shift. Married for one year, with a three-month-old baby, Jensen was a law student at Brigham Young University. He and his family lived in a trailer. While money was tight, the future looked bountiful for this hard-working, devout Mormon. Until Gary Gilmore barged into his world.¹

Thirty-six years old, Gilmore had spent eighteen of his last twenty-one years incarcerated. Bright and wily, violent and willful,...

On being ushered into the White House Oval Office on 10 January 2003, Kanan Makiya must have experienced tremendous awe and satisfaction. Standing under the nearly nineteen-foot ceiling, Makiya, trained as an architect, no doubt understood how such an imposing space added to the power and prestige of the president. George W. Bush was ensconced behind the Resolute desk, made from timbers of a British ship given to the United States in 1880. Bush greeted Makiya warmly. With Bush were Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (soon to be secretary of state), and Zalmay Khalilzad, from the...