JY

Poverty costs our country more than a trillion dollars a year for myriad complex reasons. Ending it would result in joy that is hard to quantify. Yet for all the complexities involved, the “how” of it all–the way to escape national suffering and decline and start off toward a future of organic, resilient national growth–is simple.

In Making Monsters, David Livingstone Smith offers a poignant meditation on the philosophical and psychological roots of dehumanization. Drawing on harrowing accounts of lynchings, Smith establishes what dehumanization is and what it isn't. When we dehumanize our enemy, we hold two incongruous beliefs at the same time: We believe our enemy is at once subhuman and fully human.