The best books that enlarged our understanding of interpersonal violence and contributed to reduced predation

First published in 1992, this book tied hidden individual trauma to other, more recognized, and accepted forms of trauma, such as combat and terrorism. Beautifully written and insightful, it broadened our understanding of trauma and made the case for taking domestic violence, rape, and sexual abuse more seriously than the culture at large had heretofore taken it.

As someone who lived through the era where women were advised if they were raped to “lie back and enjoy it,” the book brought a dose of reality to the surreal assumptions of people who minimized and excused domestic battery, rape, and sexual assault.

The book also addressed why efforts are so often made to silence survivors. Perhaps the most famous quote from the book is, "It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering.”

This book changed the landscape for sexual abuse and rape survivors.

Robert Hare has been the premier researcher on psychopathy for decades. He wrote the test, the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, which has become the gold standard for identifying individuals high in psychopathy.

What is so refreshing about his work is that it is based on research and that it neither sensationalizes nor minimizes psychopathy. There is a huge category of true crime books that sensationalize and almost romanticize people who are callous, remorseless, and lack a conscience. They are written about as though they are larger than life and almost anti-heroes.

On the other hand, there are accounts that seek to empathize with individuals who see others as prey, and some literature even talks about psychopathy as a positive trait. Hare brings a wealth of research and clinical experience with individuals who have high levels of psychopathic traits. His is the clearest, most informed, and most level-headed description of this malady that causes so much harm that I have seen.

This book has been updated every few years since the first edition came out in 1984. The latest and most updated edition of this book came out in 2021. The book describes how various techniques of persuasion work and why some fail. Cialdini draws from not only a wide base of research literature but has done extensive fieldwork, including joining sales programs to learn how salesmen are trained and what techniques they use.

He hid behind pillars at one point to see the techniques Hari Krishnas used to solicit funds at airports. The research is often startling and counter-intuitive. Who knew, for example, that if someone agrees to put a small card in the window of their house asking people to drive safely, they would be four times more likely to accept a large, unsightly billboard on their front lawn with the same message than would individuals who were not given the small card.

I have long thought that everyone should be aware of the techniques used to manipulate people by predators as well as salesmen and politicians.

This classic was written in 1983 and is a deep dive into human malice. Peck was a Christian and a psychiatrist, and he drew a distinction between ordinary sins and evil. "It is not their sins per se that characterize evil people, rather it is the subtlety and persistence and consistency of their sins. This is because the central defect of the evil is not the sin but the refusal to acknowledge it.”

As someone who dealt with offenders who were either consistently violent or sexually assaultive or both–some of whom had no remorse and positively enjoyed the use of violence to the point they described it as “better than crack, better than cocaine," I struggled to find some author who would speak to me about the nature of malevolence. Peck was the first I found, and I was profoundly grateful for someone who saw what I saw and did not flinch.

Published in 1997, DeBecker offered something no one else I was reading came close to: an explanation of warning signs that precede violence that are so subtle they leave many people with a bad feeling about a situation, for example, with a stranger, but no idea why they feel that way. The temptation then is to override the gut feeling: “What is wrong with me? It’s the middle of the day and this nice man just wants to help me carry my groceries up to my apartment.”

DeBecker himself is a fascinating figure. He grew up with a heroin-addicted mother who waved a gun around frequently and finally shot his stepfather before committing suicide when he was 16. DeBecker learned to rely on small, subtle clues to tell when she was dangerous and when she was not. After her death, he was taken in by Rosemary Clooney, the mother of a friend of his. He became her road manager, then an assistant to Liz Taylor.

He eventually developed a very successful firm that assessed threats for many Hollywood Stars, and he helped write the MOSAIC Threat Assessment Systems, which is the protocol used to assess threats to justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. He has been head of security for Jeff Bezos. His insights in this book came out of left field. For all the reading I had done about interpersonal violence, I had never read anything that startling new and useful.