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    An End to Murder: A Criminologist's View of Violence Throughout History
    Unavailable
    An End to Murder: A Criminologist's View of Violence Throughout History
    Unavailable
    An End to Murder: A Criminologist's View of Violence Throughout History
    Ebook716 pages6 hours

    An End to Murder: A Criminologist's View of Violence Throughout History

    By Colin Wilson and Damon Wilson

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The acclaimed author of such seminal works as The Occult and The Outsider and his son investigate the history and causes of unnecessary human violence.
     
    Human history can be seen as a catalog of coldhearted murders, mindless blood feuds, appalling massacres, and devastating wars. We are the only species on the planet whose ingrained habit of conflict and perpetual warfare constitutes the chief threat to our own survival.
     
    In An End to Murder, the Wilsons assess whether human beings are in reality as cruel and violent as is generally believed. The book explores the possibility that humankind is on the verge of a fundamental change: that we are about to become truly civilized. Covering a wide-reaching history of violence from the first hominids to the twenty-first century, the book touches on key moments of change while also indicating where things have not changed since the Stone Age. It follows the history of violence from fifteenth-century baron Gilles de Rais (“Bluebeard”), the first known and possibly most prolific serial killer in history; to Victorian domestic murder, the invention of psychiatry, Sherlock Holmes, and the invention of forensic science; the fifteenth-century Taiping Rebellion in China, in which more than twenty million died; World Wars I and II; more recent genocides and instances of “ethnic cleansing;” and contemporary terrorism.
     
    As well as offering an overview of violence throughout our history, the authors explore the latest psychological, forensic, and social attempts to understand and curb modern human violence.
     
    “I was amazed by the range and breadth of material . . . Their book will teach you a lot you didn’t know about history and human behavior and violence.” —Psych Central
     
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateNov 17, 2015
    ISBN9781632202383
    Unavailable
    An End to Murder: A Criminologist's View of Violence Throughout History

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    Reviews for An End to Murder

    3.5/5

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    • 3/5
      For the first few chapters of this book I was enthralled and thought, "Wow, this will be a five-star book for sure." Alas, no. The further I read, the further its star rating slipped, until I had utterly lost confidence in it. Here's why:1. The book is riddled with inaccuracies. Most of them were minor, piddling things, but of course they made me doubt the veracity of the whole. The Jack the Ripper chapter contains serious errors. For instance, Wilson repeats the old myth about Mary Kelly being pregnant (and he gets her name wrong, calling her Mary Jeanette Kelly instead of Mary Jane Kelly). He also says he believes in the "Jack the Ripper diary," now exposed as a forgery.2. The book is very repetitious. It's as if Wilson was writing each chapter as a second entity and forgot they were supposed to be part of a whole. Details of cases are repeated throughout the book, sometimes twice in the same chapter even.3. There were a lot of typos, in particular word repetitions, that were annoying.4. Wilson has a tendency to make grand, sweeping statements that are either false or unprovable. For example: "All serial killers come from underprivileged backgrounds, lower-middle-class or below" and: "No artist has ever committed a sadistic murder." I can think of a few serial killers such as Charles Ng, who came from middle-class or wealthy families. And I don't know about violent artists, but it seems unlikely that NOT ANY artist has EVER committed that type of crime. Though he is extensively read on murder, Wilson can't claim to have read about every single homicide in the world, so his statement about artists cannot be considered a fact.5. There was no appendix, notes or bibliography, so I have no idea of most of Wilson's sources. I suspect he used just one source for many of his stories, which would explain why there were so many errors. That said, I still liked the book pretty much. It contains details of historical cases that you're not likely to find elsewhere, and Wilson has some very intriguing, if not entirely convincing, theories on the causes of violent crime. But I would have serious reservations about recommending this book to others. Pity. It started out so well.