text: Jonathan Glover's book is not quite like anything you've read on war, state terror, and genocide.  The tour of twentieth-century horrors is thematic rather than chronological, organized according to the ethical issues Glover wants to explore.  This takes a little getting used to, but it allows the author to jump, for example, from the First World War to the Cuban Missile Crisis, to see which lessons had been learned in the interim and which might be applied in the future.  The cumulative power of Glover's pointillist technique is enormous.  "Humanity" combines a clear-eyed (necessarily often gruesome) depiction of *in*humanity with an informed and enlightening discussion of how leaders and ordinary people can change things for the better.  As an examination of the psychological and existential origins of mass murder and genocide, it marks an advance on Ervin Staub's classic "Roots of Evil," and should be of interest to any student of modern history and politics
  