This important book confronts the brutal history of the twentieth century to unravel the psychological mystery of why so many atrocities occurred--the Holocaust, Hiroshima, the Gulag, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and others--and how we can prevent their recurrence. Jonathan Glover finds disturbing similarities in the psychology of those involved with atrocities, yet offers hope that the development of a political and personal moral imagination can empower us to resist all acts of cruelty.

Part. 1: Ethics without the moral law Part. 2: The moral psychology of waging war Part. 3: Tribalism Part. 4: War as a trap Part. 5: Belief and terror: Stalin and his heirs Part. 6: The will to create mankind anew: The Nazi experiment Part. 7: On the recent moral history of humanity.