Pure Evil - Imagined Interviews with History's Tyrants

What turns a human being into a monster capable of orchestrating the deaths of millions? Can we ever truly understand the minds behind history's most horrific atrocities? In Pure Evil, Robert Walker dares to ask the questions history books can't answer. Step into imagined interview rooms with nine of the most notorious tyrants who ever lived—from ancient conquerors to 20th-century dictators—and confront them directly about their actions, their beliefs, and their chilling justifications. Sit across from: Adolf Hitler, explaining the Holocaust as "necessary surgery." Joseph Stalin, reducing millions of deaths to cold "mathematics." Genghis Khan, defending mass slaughter as the simple "logic of the steppe." Leopold II of Belgium, framing colonial genocide as "resource management." Caligula, finding perverse humor in absolute power and humiliation. Pol Pot, calmly describing Year Zero as "cleansing" a nation. Qin Shi Huang, justifying brutal unification as the "price of transformation." Vlad the Impaler, arguing that terror was simply "effective governance." Mao Zedong, rationalizing catastrophic famine as the cost of progress. Drawing on extensive historical research and psychological insight, Pure Evil goes beyond biography to explore the chilling mechanisms of moral disengagement that allowed these men to commit unspeakable acts without apparent remorse. Unsettling, thought-provoking, and profoundly relevant, Pure Evil challenges us to confront the uncomfortable truth: that the line between ordinary human psychology and extraordinary evil may be thinner than we dare to believe.