Offers a more sophisticated and comprehensive psychological view of how anyone can potentially participate in heinous crimes against humanity. In this book, social psychologist points to the dispositional and situational factors than can lead ordinary people to commit extraordinary acts of evil.

Waller argues that by becoming more aware of the things that lead to extraordinary evil, we will be less likely to be surprised by it and less likely to be unwitting accomplices through our passivity.

Preface: "I Couldn't Do This to Someone"
Part 1: What Are the Origins of Extraordinary Human Evil?
Introduction: A Place Called Mauthausen
1. The Nature of Extraordinary Human Evil
"Nits Make Lice"
2. Killers of Conviction: Groups, Ideology, and Extraordinary Evil
Dovey's Story
3. The "Mad Nazi": Psychopathology, Personality, and Extraordinary Evil
The Massacre at Babi Yar
4. The Dead End of Demonization
The Invasion of Dili
Part 2: Beyond Demonization: How Ordinary People Commit Extraordinary Evil
A Model of Extraordinary Human Evil
5. The Nature of Human Nature: Our Ancestral Shadow
The Tonle Sap Massacre
6. Defining the Killers: Identities of the Perpetrators
Death of a Guatemalan Village
7. Immediate Social context: A Culture of Cruelty
The Church at Ntamara
8. Defining the "Other": Social Death of the Victims
The Safe Area of Srebrenica
Part 3: What Have We Learned and Why Does It Matter?
9. Conclusion: Can We Be Delivered from Extraordinary Evil?