Winner of the 2012 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Nonfiction A revelatory look at why we dehumanize each other, with stunning examples from world history as well as today\'s headlines Brute.
Less Than Human is a powerful and highly original study of the roots of human violence and bigotry, and it as timely as it is relevant..
It draws on a rich mix of history, evolutionary psychology, biology, anthropology, and philosophy to document the pervasiveness of dehumanization, describe its forms, and explain why we so often resort to it.
Less Than Human is the first book to illuminate precisely how and why we sometimes think of Others as subhuman creatures.
The problem of dehumanization is everyone\'s problem.
We are all potential dehumanizers, just as we are all potential objects of dehumanization.
Smith shows that it is a dangerous mistake to think of dehumanization as the exclusive preserve of Nazis, communists, terrorists, Jews, Palestinians, or any other monster of the moment.
We still find it in war, genocide, xenophobia, and racism.
But it isn\'t just a relic of the past.
Dehumanization has made atrocities like the Holocaust, the genocide in Rwanda, and the slave trade possible.
People often regard members of their own kind as Less Than human, and use terms like these for those whom they wish to harm, enslave, or exterminate.
Vermin.
Lice.
Cockroach.
Winner of the 2012 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Nonfiction A revelatory look at why we dehumanize each other, with stunning examples from world history as well as today\'s headlines Brute
