Summary Paragraph

History's most notorious and brutal killers still enjoy fame as public fascination with their lives and their crimes continues to grow. Stone Cold Souls is a detailed examination of the most brutal killers in history. Moffatt does what he does best by looking at historical accounts of events, analyzes them from a psychological perspective, and presents his assessment in captivating fashion. He examines different types of killers, offers case studies and historical context, and describes what sets these cases apart for other kinds of killers. Even in a day and age where pop culture has made serial crime a mainstay of movies and books, the depravity of the killers profiled in this book will still shock even a desensitized reader. Men, women, and children alike have committed crimes so atrocious that it is hard to imagine that these events are not works of fiction. Moffatt examines the difficult questions that inevitably arise when one reads cases of unthinkable torture and cruelty - why? Were these people simply evil or is it possible that, given other circumstances, they could have redirected their energies into more productive outlets? The author answers these questions and others and reveals the lives and crimes of these ruthless killers.

Table of Contents

--Chapter One The Quest for Reasons
--Chapter Two Ghost Stories and Torture Chambers
--Chapter Three Murder for Sport: Serial Killers
--Chapter Four Running With the Devil
--Chapter Five Tainted Virtue: Young Killers
--Chapter Six Primum Non Nocere: Josef Mengele
--Chapter Seven Treasonous Guardians
--Chapter Eight Beauty Becomes the Beast
--Chapter Nine A Deadly Claim To Fame: Media Seekers
--Chapter Ten The Margins of Existence: The Search for a Coherent Theory of Malevolence
--Bibliography

-- Index

Endorsements

Can we learn from humanity's worst as well as its best? By recounting many of the most gruesome and barbaric of human killings--this is not a book for faint-hearted bedtime reading--psychologist and crime consultant Gregory Moffatt lays bare our human capacity for evil, and the life experiences and thinking that create such evil.
-- Dr. David G. Myers, Professor Psychology (Hope College)