A leading psychiatrist and a clinical psychologist specializing in violence, psychosis, and criminal pathology offer chilling insights into the minds of murderers through a hierarchy of criminal behavior ranging from crimes of passion to serial murder.
Michael H. Stone, MD,is professor of clinical psychiatry at the
Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. He is the author of
ten books, most recently The Anatomy of Evil and over two hundred
professional articles and book chapters. From 2006 to 2008, he was
the host of Discovery Channel's series Most Evil and has been
featured in the New York Times, Psychology Today, the Christian
Science Monitor, CNN, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, the New York
Post, the London Times, the BBC, and Newsday, among many other
media outlets.
Gary Brucato, PhD, a clinical psychologist and researcher in the
areas of violence, psychosis, and other serious psychopathology, is
the assistant director of the Center of Prevention and Evaluation
at the New York State Psychiatric Center/Columbia University
Medical Center. A regular contributor to the academic literature,
he is widely consulted by professionals and patients throughout the
country. His research group has recently acquired a grant from the
National Institute of Mental Health to study the relationship
between early psychotic symptoms, and violent thoughts and
behavior.
""Fascinating, disturbing. . . . Budding criminologists will find
this a useful resource for study and contemplation, while TRUE
CRIME ENTHUSIASTS WILL BE RIVETED by the assiduous prodding into
the criminal mind.”
—Publishers Weekly
“The New Evil is a book that will not only be considered
groundbreaking but a work that’s also long overdue, given the
violent changes that have convulsed the United States since the
1960s. A follow-up to The Anatomy of Evil, it is the study of evil
itself and the individuals who commit it. There are reasons for the
types of violence we are seeing today, and Drs. Michael Stone and
Gary Brucato have given us not just something we want to read but
also something we absolutely must read if we’re ever going to
understand the mind-set of these killers.”
—Kevin M. Sullivan, author of The Bundy Murders: A Comprehensive
History
“This impressive team of clinical experts has gotten as close to
evil as anyone ever has. They’ve come face-to-face with some of the
world’s worst offenders. Building on Stone’s twenty-two-step scale
of evil, Brucato and Stone unflinchingly explore shocking acts of
depraved aggression so we can better understand and treat violent
individuals. The New Evil should be required reading in criminology
and forensic psychology.”
—Katherine Ramsland, PhD, professor of forensic psychology and
author of Confession of a Serial Killer: The Untold Story of Dennis
Rader, the BTK Killer
“A fascinating and disturbing addition to the study of violent
crime and its motivations. Stone and Brucato explore the twenty-two
gradations of evil and compare earlier felonious acts to the abrupt
escalation and broadened diversity of the new era of violence that
arrived in the 1960s. The New Evil merits inclusion on the
reference shelf alongside the classics by Hare and Cleckley.”
—Diane Fanning, author of Bitter Remains and Edgar® Award
finalist
“Unflinchingly and insightfully examining hundreds of cases of
serial murder, mass shootings, sexual assault, and other
atrocities, Stone and Brucato dare to ask, `What is evil, and how
does it fit into our current psychiatric and legal frameworks?’
Their blood-chilling catalog of the most terrible crimes of the
last half century is interwoven with keen observations regarding
the role of our ever-coarsening culture in giving breadth and scope
to these atrocities, giving us genuine pause upon pause.”
—John Douglas, FBI criminal profiler and author of the #1 New York
Times–bestseller Mindhunter
“This remarkable compendium of `evil’ should be in the libraries of
psychologists, psychiatrists, prosecutors, homicide investigators,
criminal attorneys, and anyone with an interest in the criminal
mind throughout the world. The extensive research alone makes this
a benchmark text. The authors explain and define the elements of
evil and illustrate to the reader this abhorrent evil from
psychosis to psychopathy, ranging from crimes of passion to sexual
serial murder. The text consists of the Scales of Depravity that
uses a twenty-two-point gradation system to classify evil based on
actual case studies encompassing information from over 780 research
and clinical sources, which elucidate concise and detailed
information about the psychodynamics and psychopathology of
maladaptive behavior as it relates to murder.”
—Cmdr. Vernon J. Geberth, MS, MPS, Fellow of the American Academy
of Forensic Sciences and author of Sex-Related Homicide and Death
Investigation
“In this impressive book, Dr. Stone and Dr. Brucato provide one of
the most comprehensive, conceptually clear frameworks on the
typology of violence. Using extensive case studies, they explore
and offer insight into different motives and patterns of homicides
and other violent behavior. This book sharpens and enhances our
understanding of violence and psychopathology of evil acts like no
other resource.”
—Ali Khadivi, PhD, clinical and forensic psychologist and professor
of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, Albert Einstein College of
Medicine
“Stone’s classic book The Anatomy of Evil has provided the most
detailed and comprehensive description of psychopathic behavior
available in contemporary psychiatric literature. The present
volume, written by him in collaboration with Dr. Gary Brucato,
further deepens and expands the precise presentation of the entire
spectrum of psychopathy, proposes a comprehensive set of a
`Gradations of Evil’ scale, and thus makes a fundamental
contribution to the diagnostic and prognostic evaluation of this
pathology. A major, disturbing finding emerges from this study: the
increase of extremely destructive, violent individual criminal
behavior since the 1960s in this country and, to a lesser degree,
in other parts of the world. This book challenges the reader to
become concerned about the increase of evil that we are witnessing,
to reflect on its causes, and to recognize our collective
responsibility to confront this development. It is a must-read for
all mental health professionals and for the educated citizen alert
to our social problems.”
—Otto Kernberg, MD, professor of psychiatry at the Weill Cornell
Medical College, and training and supervising psychoanalyst at the
Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and
Research
“The varieties of evil encountered in the commission of serious
crimes can easily defy understanding. The first step toward making
sense of all of this is through the process of classification.
Identifying the critical elements that things have in common in
order to classify them into categories helps to impose order on a
chaotic, mystifying, and often horrifying aspect of human behavior.
By dividing motivations for murder and other serious crimes into
twenty-two well-defined gradations that range from the least evil
(killing in self-defense) to evil at its most extreme (murder in
the context of torture), Stone and Brucato’s excellent book The New
Evil provides readers with the tools to tease apart the motivations
underlying violent crime acts and to help make the unfathomable
more understandable.”
—Michael B. First, MD, editorial consultant on the fifth edition of
the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders
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