Book
Why they kill : the discoveries of a maverick criminologist
Record details
- ISBN: 9780375402494
- ISBN: 0375402497
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Physical Description:
print
p. ; cm. - Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.
Search for related items by subject
| Subject: | Athens, Lonnie H. Criminal behavior - Research - Methodology Violent crimes - Case studies Criminal psychology - Case studies |
Available copies
- 2 of 2 copies available at BC Interlibrary Connect. (Show)
- 1 of 1 copy available at Terrace Public Library.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 2 total copies.
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| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Holdable? | Status | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Terrace Public Library | 364.3 Rho (Text) | 001367929 | Adult Non-fiction | Volume hold | Available | - |
- Book News : Book News Reviews
Explores the discoveries of criminologist Lonnie Athens, which challenge conventional theories about violent behavior. By interviewing violent criminals, Athens identified a four-stage pattern of social development common to all seriously violent people, beginning with brutalization in childhood. The author supports this theory with historical evidence and shows how it explains the violent careers of infamous offenders such as Mike Tyson and Lee Harvey Oswald. Rhodes is the author of 17 books, including novels and works of history, journalism, and letters. His The Making of the Atomic Bomb won a Pulitzer Prize. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) - Booklist Reviews : Booklist Monthly Selections - #2 September 1999
/*Starred Review*/ If the words true crime conjure up images of cheap paperbacks with lurid covers, or quickie hardcovers designed to cash in on some headline-making atrocity, here's a book that will change your image of the genre. Rhodes, who won a Pulitzer for The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1987), has crafted a serious, intelligent, and altogether mesmerizing portrait of evil and the people who fight it. Chief among the fighters (at least in this book) is Lonnie Athens, whose rocky childhood led him into a career as a criminologist. His decade-long study of criminals behind bars revealed things no one had yet begun to suspect--including, most importantly, the reasons why people commit violence on one another. Rhodes' profile of Athens--this is in many ways a traditional biography--strongly suggests that the people best equipped to understand violence are those who, like Athens, have seen it close up. This is not a flashy book, and some readers may be turned off by Rhodes' somewhat dry style. Others may find some of the graphic language unsettling. But Rhodes tells a remarkable story, and the book ranks near the top of the true-crime genre. ((Reviewed September 15, 1999)) Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews - Choice Reviews : Choice Reviews 2000 February
Rhodes's study is based on the life and work of Lonnie H. Athens. The author begins with a brief biography, then turns to an assessment of the theory Athens developed in his book The Creation of Dangerous Violent Criminals (1989). Growing out of interviews of violent criminals in prison, Athens's theory states that violent people evolve through four specific stages: brutalization, belligerency, violent performances, and virulency. Rhodes, a noted journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner, evaluates this theory by examining several prominent violent people and suggests that the theory can be more broadly applied. Both Rhodes and Athens recommend early intervention to reduce the incidence of violence in contemporary society. The book is well written and readable and is lightly referenced. Recommended for general readers. Copyright 2000 American Library Association - Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 1999 August #1
National Book Award and Pulitzer-winning author Rhodes (The Making of the Atomic Bomb, 1987, etc.) offers a passionate assessment of the career of Dr. Lonnie Athens, a cutting-edge criminologist whose overlooked work deciphers the process by which individuals commit themselves to violent action. Unlike most criminologists, Athens grew up intimately acquainted with interpersonal mayhem, both within his family and in the high-crime environment of Richmond, Va. As a Berkeley graduate student, he embarked on the then-radical tactic of interviewing prisoners about their violent crimes and eventually formulated a provocative yet persuasive theory that such actors undergo a four-stage violentization process, in which their own childhood brutalization and horrification (witnessing violence against others) is augmented by violence coaching, until the individual instinctually accepts violence as a ready solution to personal conflict. Although Athens published two books on his findings, his academic career foundered for many years. Rhodes thus applies his considerable narrative authority both toward detailed explication of Athens s work and as advocacy. He accomplishes these goals in many ways, ranging from his poignant re-creation of Athens s blasted childhood, to his application of Athens s template to notorious criminals like Lee Harvey Oswald (and Mike Tyson!), and more generally to such phenomena as wartime atrocities and the extreme violence of the medieval era. By utilizing Athens s work as a foundation, Rhodes produces a disturbing and engrossing study of the (seemingly) myriad motivators of contemporary violence; however, his inclusion of sundry third-person scholarship and of such unexpected tangents as the life of Louis XIII tend to dilute the clarity and immediacy which mainstream discussion of social crises inherently demands. That said, Athens s tumultuous life is illuminated and his work comes alive in the context of Rhodes s fine prose and elegant organization. Athens s thesis is both subtle and discomforting (in that he finds the completed violentization process to be irreversible); one concurs with the necessity of Rhodes s commitment to introduce it into the often dissonant arenas of contemporary criminology and social theory. Copyright 1999 Kirkus Reviews - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 1999 May #1
The award-winning Rhodes, author of books like The Making of the Atomic Bomb, checks out the groundbreaking work of criminologist Lonnie Athens, himself the product of a violent family. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information. - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 1999 September #2
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. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/99.]AJim G. Burns, Ottumwa P.L., IA Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information. - Publishers Weekly Reviews : PW Reviews 1999 August #3
What transforms an ordinary person into a violent criminal? Not genetic inheritance or low self-esteem or coming from a violent subculture, answers Pulitzer Prize winning 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 Cahners Business Information.
