Nature of Good and Evil

"Samuel P. Oliner's exploration of The Nature of Good and Evil is informed by his grasp of history, his mastery of sociology and the authority of his own experience as one who as a young child of the Holocaust experienced the nature of both good and evil when he was rescued by a Polish non-Jew at the risk of her life. In this work, by concentrating on the Holocaust, the Armenian and Rwandan genocides, Oliner has further solidified his well deserved reputation as a scholar of insight and discernment into an area often left to philosophers and theologians and he has enriched our vocabulary to comprehend both good and evil while enlarging our moral imagination. A valuable contribution to the field, an even more valuable contribution to moral discourse in our age of atrocity, he allows us to Understand the Many Faces of Moral and Immoral Human Behavior." --Michael Berenbaum

"Oliner has reminded us once again of the capacity of human beings for both depraved cruelty and loving heroism."--Nel Noddings, author of The Maternal Factor: Two Paths to Morality

"With this book, Samuel Oliner continues to demonstrate why he is one of the preeminent sociologists of our time, as he grapples with the most fundamental issues of life and death and the nature of good and evil. Synthesizing and culling insights from a wide-ranging interdisciplinary literature, Oliner is primarily concerned with the most radical manifestations of evil, most notably the Holocaust and the Armenian and Rwandan genocides. While shedding light on the perpetrators of evil and the bystanders whose passivity is complicit in their wrongdoing, Oliner also highlights those whose resistance and heroic opposition to evil serve as moral exemplars to others." --Ronald Berger, Professor of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Author of Surviving the Holocaust: A Life Course Approach