• Reviewer: H. Oberdiek, Swarthmore College
• Readership Level: General Readers, Lower-division Undergraduates, Upper-division Undergraduates, Graduate Students, Researchers/Faculty, Two-Year Technical Program Students
• Interdisciplinary Subjects:
• Subject: Humanities - Philosophy
• Choice Issue: aug 2017 vol. 54 no. 12

Here is one description, along with three endorsements:

Dr. Elizabeth K. Minnich was Hannah Arendt's teaching assistant when Arendt was defending her book on the trial of Adolf Eichmann ("The Engineer of the Nazi 'Final Solution' ") in which Arendt announced her then-controversial observation about "the banality of evil." In the years since then, while being a professor of philosophy (moral, political) and publishing on other subjects, Minnich has continued reflecting on, researching, and writing about her own reversal of Arendt's controversial concept: the evil of banality. This book presents her findings, moving through Arendt's concept to consider further examples of extensive evils such as slavery and human trafficking; economic exploitation; for-profit penitentiaries and deportation centers; and more historical and international examples. Minnich also considers explanations of the 'how' and 'why' of extensive evils by social psychologists and historians such as Milgram and Zimbardo whose good work on obedience to authority and peer pressure she challenges. The book is vivid, filled with examples, and accessible even as it is grounded in a philosopher's moral and political resources. Most of all, Minnich invites readers to think with her about what she considers perhaps the moral challenge of our age: the reality that it takes many, many ordinarily decent people doing their jobs reliably for the extensive evils of genocide, slavery, et al – those that persist over time, that become 'normalized' – to be possible at all. And she also discusses extensive good, the people and ways of acting that are also always present as we learn to resist, to turn back, extensive evils.

The following "blurbs" are excerpted with permission from scholars' evaluative reviews requested.

Reviewer # 1:

"Evil of Banality" is a subtle, original contribution to a literature that attempts to make sense of people’s evil-doings. The book approaches its main question, which it sets as guiding a years-long personal quest for an answer, from an Arendtian observation of Eichmann, which is that a necessary condition of evildoing is thoughtlessness. It refines this observation with Camus’ existentialist observations of choice. And it narrates an answer to its question using many and different examples, reflecting on them, and drawing conceptual distinctions that illuminate what banality is and how it is related to evil. (Dr. Bat-Ami Bar On)

Reviewer #2: This is a brilliant, wonderfully written, and tightly argued book. The key concepts of intensive v. extensive evil and intensive v. extensive good are exceptionally useful tools for sorting through the ethical dimensions of ordinary lives in a way that puts all of us on notice that it is simply not sufficient to use categories of the “unthinkable" to distance ourselves from learning to think well, both separately and together. (Dr. Sara Evans)

Reviewer #3:While I believe it is an ever-present possibility that books can actually make us better people, I see it as quite rare that they either try to or are successful in doing so: I am convinced that this one can.

The book is highly original. In part, it is original because it takes up Arendt’s thinking about morality, which is all too often overlooked because of the power of her political insights. Part of what makes this book so successful, what makes it the kind of thing that might reach more people than Arendt did, is due to the tone and voice, which is mature, humane and wise. I am absolutely convinced that this is going to be read very widely, and loved dearly as a way to help us make sense of our world, ourselves and our actions. (Dr. Stephen Schulman)

Link to interview with Elizabeth on the American Philosophical Association Blog

• She has also published the second edition of her award-winning book, Transforming Knowledge. To order the book, click on the book cover image or Go Here.

• Among recent recent book events: 92 St Y, NYC, a book conversation (with Brad lander, NY City Councilmember, interlocutor); keynote for the International Society for the Study of Teaching & Learning, Norway; "Community conversation and readings" at public libraries and a "Peace and Justice Center" in New England; interview on WGDR FM, "Peace Rising" show; conference sessions at Society for Values in Higher Education, AAC&U.

• In 2005 she co-authored with Si Kahn, The Fox in the Henhouse: How Privatization Threatens Democracy, published by Berrett-Kohehler. Order it from Berrett-Koehler.