A must read ...

... The Banality of Evil 2. The must read is the review of Bryan's that he links to near the end of the post. Note that at no point does he divulge any of the sensational (and presumably gruesome) details. This is a well-nigh perfect book review, filled with money quotes, though I will cite only one: "in the last analysis, the evil act is a decision, even when taken by children. No causal chain, however plausible, will account for that moment of dreadful freedom when some do and some do not. The only coherent and humane account we have of such decisions is the Christian doctrine of original sin which says, not that people are evil, but rather that there is evil in all of us. This is humane because it provides sympathetic insight rather than dubious chains of quasi-scientific causality."