Book Review: The Universal Challenge of Combatting Evil    The
Universal Challenge of Combatting Evil  Overcoming Evil  A
review of Overcoming Evil: Genocide, Violent Conflict, and
Terrorism by Ervin Staub. New York, NY: Oxford University Press,
2011. 581 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-538204-4. $49.95  Reviewed by
Fathali Moghaddam and Zachary Warren  In his 2007 review of
Philip Zimbardo’s The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good
People Turn Evil, Ervin Staub (2007, para. 1) describes
Zimbardo’s work as a “highly personal book.” The same can be
said of Staub’s new book, Overcoming Evil: Genocide, Violent
Conflict, and Terrorism. Staub is professor of psychology
emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and
founder of its Psychology of Peace and Violence program.
Overcoming Evil represents the culmination of his life’s
scholarly and applied work on the roots of collective violence
and strategies for its prevention.  Staub was born in Hungary
and as a young child lived through Nazism and communism. He
escape