The book has many great qualities, although it clearly is not for all readers. People with a video game mindset will get bored the first time Zimbardo digresses for a page or two to explain something, and many others will likely just skim through the long sections on the SPE and Abu Ghraib.
However, for those wanting to get a fundamental understanding into the nature of why men do bad things, The Lucifer Effect, is a good start, and far easier to sift through than
typical psychological texts or those which become more well known for the times they were written in than anything immanent (think of any book by Magnus Hirschfeld).
In short, read this book with an open mind, and you will likely have a different opinion on many of the things you take for granted when you flip on the television, watch the latest daily horror from around the world or around the corner. And for those you don’t, this book may explain why. Having one’s cake, yet eating it too, need not always be a desideratum, need it?
Article comments
1 - Jake
"Zimbardo’s book, by contrast, is more grounded in experimentation, documentation, and less malleable and subjective than Bloom’s book [...]"
Which is, to be sure, true, but he also engages in a great deal of speculation and meaning making from his examples. I discuss this and some other books that tie into Zimbardo's work in my post on The Lucifer Effect. The most important lesson to take from it is, I think, how secrecy can beget tyranny at virtually all levels, from the top of statecraft (see: the USSR) to the lowliest prison guard.