Professor Zimbardo deserves heartfelt thanks for disclosing and illuminating the dark, hidden corners of the human soul.
– Vaclav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic

This is a book for our times, a multilayered classic. What is truly remarkable is its blending of sensitive personal exploration, brilliant social-psychological analysis, and sustained ethical passion.
– Robert Jay Lifton, author of The Nazi Doctors and Superpower Syndrome

If there has been a more important and compelling book written in the last twenty-five years, I’ve not encountered it. Phil Zimbardo’s engaging and beautifully written tour de force uncovers the sources of evil–big and small. The Lucifer Effect accomplishes more than simply making the darkness visible; it also helps to make lightness possible. It is crucial reading for everyone.
– Jon D. Hanson, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

I’ll keep you posted but first I have two history books, that Favorite Daughter and I plan to read “together” before she tries a different American history class in the fall, replacing the one she dropped (see below for that story):
Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States”
and
Sarah Vowell’s “The Partly Cloudy Patriot”

They are BOUND to be more gripping power of story than this!

Obviously my keen interest in such situational psychology right now is because it sounds as if it might apply to how good, loving people can become religious-ritual childbeaters playing a dehumanized power role based on this grand godly “train up a child” plan, become faceless authority monsters to their own beloved children and not be able to see it themselves or realize what they are doing, or how to stop before they really hurt their subjects. And all the people around them fall into their own roles, and can’t see it either.

Government underminers too, maybe, even with the best of intentions. . .if so, the solution is that they have to be STOPPED and extricated from the whole situation so they can become the unique individuals they were before. What’s that bible verse about losing yourself?