Author Description

"Have you ever met a person who left you wondering, "How could someone be so twisted? So evil?" Prompted by clues in her sister's diary after her mysterious death, author Barbara Oakley takes the reader inside the head of the kinds of malevolent people you know, perhaps all too well, but could never understand." "The story begins in the coastal town of Sequim, Washington, where Oakley's beautiful, secretive sister, Carolyn, arrived unexpectedly one day, belongings in tow. Carolyn had moved to town for a reason, and, as usual, the reason was underhanded. Who was this woman, Oakley had long wondered, who had been loved so dearly by so many - and yet could prove so strangely malevolent?" "Starting with psychology as a frame of reference, Oakley uses cutting-edge images of the working brain to provide startling support for the idea that "evil" people act the way they do mainly as the result of a dysfunction. In fact, some deceitful, manipulative, and even sadistic behavior appears to be programmed genetically - suggesting that some people really are born to be bad. But there are unexpected fringe benefits to "evil genes." We may not like them - but we literally can't live without them." "Oakley deftly ties together the big-picture implications of revolutionary neuroscientific and genetic discoveries, showing the eerily similar behavioral tics of Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, and Slobodan Milosevic. The dramatic recent scientific findings presented in Evil Genes shed light not only on infamous dictators of world history but on politics at home, as well as business, religion, and everyday life. In fact, history itself has been shaped by the strange confluence of genes and environment that science is just now beginning to understand." "Oakley links the latest findings of molecular research to a wide array of seemingly unrelated historical and current phenomena: the harems of the Ottomans, the chummy jokes of "Uncle Joe" Stalin, the pampered life of Paris Hilton, and the infamous activities of the executives at Enron. Throughout, she never loses sight of the personal cost of evil genes as she unravels the mystery surrounding her sister's enigmatic life - and death."--BOOK JACKET.