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Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist

by Richard Rhodes

3.78 · Rating Details · 330 Ratings · 34 Reviews

Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, brings his inimitable vision, exhaustive research, and mesmerizing prose to this timely book that dissects violence and offers new solutions to the age old problem of why people kill.

Lonnie Athens was raised by a brutally domineering father.Defying all odds, Athens became a groundbreaking crimi ...more

Paperback, 384 pages

Published October 10th 2000 by Vintage (first published 1999)

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Sep 22, 2011 Kim rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2011booksread

I've just finished reading the book, Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist by Richard Rhodes. It's the most thought-provoking book I've read in a long time, but it's also one of the most frustrating.

First of all, to clarify what it is. Richard Rhodes is a professional writer who came across the work of a criminologist named Lonnie Athens. So this book is written by a writer and not a sociologist. Mr. Athens has published several books on his own. This book charts both Athen I've just finished reading the book, Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist by Richard Rhodes. It's the most thought-provoking book I've read in a long time, but it's also one of the most frustrating.

First of all, to clarify what it is. Richard Rhodes is a professional writer who came across the work of a criminologist named Lonnie Athens. So this book is written by a writer and not a sociologist. Mr. Athens has published several books on his own. This book charts both Athens' personal and professional life and his research and theories about violence. Personally, I think a lot of the flaws of the book come from the fact that it is written by someone who is not an expert in the field and doesn't have any personal knowledge of the social sciences. The parts of the book that are strongest are the telling of personal stories of violence, the actual overarching theory of the process of violentization, and the sections that apply this theory to historical time periods and war. The sections of the book that I would personally throw out are all the discussions of competing theories and all the effort into discrediting of entire fields of the social sciences like quantitative analysis and all of psyciatry. There's a lot of theoretical gobbledygook in this book, arguing about semantics of theoretical terms that ultimately have little practical use. I have a social science background and I could barely get through these sections. Ultimately, the book would be stronger if it stopped playing insider baseball and just talked about lived experience and the process of violentization.

While I'm talking about the parts I don't like, I have to deal with this book's antipathy to psychiatry. I have a psychiatric point of view, I freely admit it. I've spent a lot of time sitting and talking with people with severe mental illness and followed their treatment. I've gone into jails to interview criminals and assess their mental state. I've been responsible to making life and death decisions about whether someone needs to be hospitalized or not, whether they are a threat to themselves or others or not. And this book really pisses me off in the way it treats both psychiatry and the issue of mental illness. Honestly, the author seems to have an agenda in proving that mental illness doesn't even exist, which is patently absurd. I actually had to skip a few pages because I couldn't bear to read his discussion of how auditory hallucinations aren't a sign of mental illness because we all talk to ourselves and have voices in our head sometimes. It's such a sign of ignorance and arrogance to think that what people who are mentally ill experience is actually the same as what you experience. Trust me, it isn't. There are people who hear actual voices that actually command them to do things. There are people who actually are paranoid, in a clinical sense, and it's not just a logical result of a violent environment, but a physical sensation that they cannot control. And it doesn't mean the same thing as what you and I mean by paranoid in normal speech. These are all things that I didn't understand until I had worked closely with people with severe mental illness.

I don't disagree with anything to do with Mr. Athens' theory of violentization. I think that most people who are mentally ill and violent have gone through that process. But I do think that his methodology a priori excludes any criminals who are mentally ill. In his interviews with violent criminals, Athens throws out any case where the subject is obviously lying or saying things that are not consistent with the record of their crimes. From my experience, taking testimony from severely mentally ill individuals, I'm sure Athens would have thrown out anyone with severe mental illness. So it can't be said for certain if this process always applies to the mentally ill who are violent. I agree with the book in that I don't think that just because someone is violent that they are mentally ill. I don't think that many psychiatrists would disagree either. If violent people are sometimes given a diagnosis of mental illness and medicated when it is not warranted, I believe that is a result of the political, practical, and bureaucratic model that says that medication is necessary for people who exhibit certain behaviors and that medication can't be given without a diagnosis of certain specific disorders. And to be fair, there are some crimes that DO argue automatically to an individual's mental illness. I'm thinking of a specific case in Dallas of a woman who cut the arms off her infant child because Jesus appeared on her TV and told her to do so. It was later discovered she had a brain tumor that caused her illness, but she could have equally had an entirely mental illness based only on her crime.

But these are not the people this book discusses. The book deals with people who are habitually and repeatedly violent and how they came to be that way. The process of violentization is actually fairly simple when you strip it of theoretical gobbledygook. Stage one is brutalization, physical violence either done to the individual or done to someone close to the subject while they watched. Typically this occurs in childhood, though it can happen later. Violent coaching is another required component. Violent coaching is either explicit or implicit encouragement of violent behavior in the subject. A parent teaching their child “not to take any shit” to fight back, to make sure they seriously hurt someone in a fight, etc. It's the teaching that violence is an appropriate or the only appropriate response to certain provocations. The next stage is belligerency, when the subject decides that to prevent himself from becoming a victim again, he will use serious violence. After that comes violent performances, when the subject begins to act violently. At this stage he can either succeed or fail in his violent performances. If he succeeds, then he must gain benefits from his success at violence. People give him respect, stop subjecting him to violence, avoid him, give him fame and glory. The final stage is virulency, when the subject decides that violence is the appropriate response to even minor insults or provocations and resolves to use it early and often. An individual must go through all of these stages in order to become ultraviolent and seriously dangerous. If they turn aside at any point, they may go on to live a normal, non-violent life. But once a person completes all these stages, apparently there is nothing that will change their outlook and behavior.

Ultimately, I think this is very important work, and needs to be more widely understood and acted upon. But I wish this book was more approachable for the average person and didn't have such useless tangents. ...more

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Jul 15, 2012 Gary rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reference, writing-reference

I bought this book originally because, as a wannabe writer trying to make my villains more believable, I thought it would help me understand...well, why they kill. What pushes a person to take another person's life.

What I learned is that all the clichés in books, movies, and TV shows are very wrong. You know the ones. He was born bad. She was a bad seed. He couldn't help it, something just made him kill all those people. She's not responsible for her actions.

Rhodes' explains Athens' theories tha ...more

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Jun 08, 2010 Patrick rated it it was amazing

Richard Rhodes may be my favorite non-fiction writer, due to very interesting books like this one. This book reveals to the reader the work of Lonnie Athens, who came up with, seemingly important theory regarding violent criminals and why people commit violent crimes. What Athens dose is to debunk current psychological theory in that people lose their reason, or suffer from mental illness which explains the root of violent crime. No, Athens suggests, I think rightly so that violence is usually d ...more

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Jul 11, 2014 Meera rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nonfiction, serial-killers-criminology, summer-2k14, psychology

Athens is unarguably a revolutionary of criminology, providing structure to a subjective and spineless field. His theory of violentization explains trauma and the creation of violent actors in depth. Through ancient times, in war, in more violently inclined indigenous populations, his theory is proved again and again through Richard Rhodes's own findings. Frequently I found myself looking at my own life in a different light. That he did not achieve the acclamation he deserved is a shame and an i ...more

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Jan 26, 2008 Ken rated it it was amazing

As long as you make sure to skip the last couple chapters, where Rhodes firmly elbows in with his own rhetoric in an embarrassing attempt to revise the theories of the subject of his book, this is an excellent portrait of an unknown genius. Lonnie Athens will completely renovate and enlighten your perceptions of violent criminality, the prison system, and the root causes of violence in our society. I'd consider Athens's theories required reading for anyone who thinks they have an opinion about w ...more

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Jan 15, 2015 Ellis Amdur rated it liked it

Rhodes covers (in far more readable fashion) the work of Lonnie Atkins, a pioneer phenomenologist of criminal behavior. Atkins’ theory is that violence is primarily created through an interaction between a young people and the abusive experiences they witness or suffer – what Atkins calls “violentization.” At first read, it seems to make perfect sense – but there is nothing in Atkins work that explains why one violent person rapes and another gets in violent fights. In my opinion, Atkins' establ ...more

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Oct 15, 2008 Lindsay rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommended to Lindsay by: my sister

Shelves: biography, sociology, nonfiction, read-postcollege, read-for-fun

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This book is as much a biography of the criminologist Lonnie Athens as it is an explication of his theories. Instead of just giving you the theory in one big chunk, or breaking it down into its logical components, the book takes you through it along the same path Athens took in coming up with it. That worked well for me, but it might confuse other readers.

There's also a lot of graphic violence, since Athens's own home life was brutal, and his research consisted of collecting the life histories ...more

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Apr 19, 2013 Joan Kite rated it really liked it

Killers, mass bombers, arsonists, sadistic rapists, and other heinous violent offenders. We wonder,'What is wrong with these people.?' Are they crazy? Were they born that way?

The answer, according to criminologist Dr. Lonnie Athens, is no. Most people who commit acts of violence learned it through life experience. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes explores Athens's ground-breaking work. His research clearly defines the transformational process of becoming a killer.

Though the book is Killers, mass bombers, arsonists, sadistic rapists, and other heinous violent offenders. We wonder,'What is wrong with these people.?' Are they crazy? Were they born that way?

The answer, according to criminologist Dr. Lonnie Athens, is no. Most people who commit acts of violence learned it through life experience. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes explores Athens's ground-breaking work. His research clearly defines the transformational process of becoming a killer.

Though the book is highly academic (put your thinking cap on), Dr. Athens personal story lends to the book's gripping quality. Athens grew up with a fist in his face. Everyone around him was violent. His family. His neighbors. Strangers in the streets that he grew up in. Moving from one bad neighborhood to the next ("an upwardly mobile neighborhood for rednecks"), Athens encountered blood and guts as daily fare. "If you get around xenophobic people, it's dangerous. They want to prove they're tough, and they try to get you."

Instead of heading to jail like many of his counterparts, Athens escaped to University of California in Berkeley - then he went to prison.

Athens spent his academic life entering the worst prisons, interviewing the most violent offenders, encountering hostility from guards and inmates alike, to find out what makes a once-upon-a-time child turn into hate-filled, heartless killer. Athens research demonstrates that violence is not a singular event, but the consequence of a four-stage process. Many, if not most criminals, become the thing they feared and hated - whether it was an abusive parent, a violent neighbor or an enemy in war. When killers strike, they mean to do it.

The process is so well-defined, governments use it to create limb-ripping machines. Once the "berserk state" is achieved, a soldier can annihilate everyone and anyone in his blood-drenched path. Government then expects our well-trained warriors to return to society as productive citizens. "Many conbat-traumatized veterans collapse into Athens's 'permanent state of disorganization,'" Rhodes writes.

The good news? If one abides by Athens's theory that violent offenders are created, then the cycle can be stopped. Murder and mayhem is preventable.

The information is abundant, the writing is, at times, dense, but Athens's theory is enlightening and hopeful. If you have an interest in the dark side of humanity, this book is worth the read.
...more

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Jul 31, 2012 Jeremy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction

OK, let's get past the title: this book is a summary of the work and career of Lonnie Athens, whose initial studies of the process of violentization led him, in my opinion, to some ideas that are much wider in scope.

Example: Hallucinations are events that exist on a spectrum, including talking to oneself, hearing controlling voices in one's head, remembering the advice of a significant mentor, etc. They are examples of ways we interact with what Richard Rhodes sums up as our phantom community: t OK, let's get past the title: this book is a summary of the work and career of Lonnie Athens, whose initial studies of the process of violentization led him, in my opinion, to some ideas that are much wider in scope.

Example: Hallucinations are events that exist on a spectrum, including talking to oneself, hearing controlling voices in one's head, remembering the advice of a significant mentor, etc. They are examples of ways we interact with what Richard Rhodes sums up as our phantom community: the self is constantly experiencing events and making decisions in the context of an internal dialogue, the "soliloquy of the self." Constantly. At times of inner turmoil, we experience discord between the various speakers. In the normal course of events, we don't even notice that these conversations are taking place.

One of the important ways in which we define ourselves is by choosing the members of the "committee in our heads," and by disagreeing with the malevolent members while taking support from the nurturing members.

Like a typical faculty meeting, in other words.

Now, Rhodes doesn't spend an awful lot of the book discussing HEALTHY people and the way in which their personalities interact with this committee. And I'll grant that the subject of the creation of violent criminals, while perhaps topical and exciting, may not be everyone's cup of tea. I read about half of this book quite a while ago, and put it down. The recent cinema massacre, and the questions it brings up: "How could someone become so evil?" etc., drew me back to revisit it. Unexpectedly, the book takes a sharp turn about 250 pages in, as Athens' work takes up a broader range of human behavior.

It seems to me that Lonnie Athens' work does no less than put forth a novel, logical, and maybe even useful way of considering personality development and how we cope from day to day with the challenges and decisions of life. The fact that he does so while also developing a radical new way of thinking about justice, societal support, crime and punishment was, frankly, astonishing.

In my opinion, this is a very important book and I hope my review encourages you to read it.

I only picked the book up because I have read and enjoyed other books by Richard Rhodes. As it turns out, Rhodes and his brother underwent some of the process of violentization as children, as did Athens. If you've ever wondered why some people with shitty childhoods turn out very, very bad, while others seem to do much better, this book explains - in detail - how that happens. ...more

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Jan 24, 2016 Fishface rated it it was amazing

Shelves: true-crime, mental-health, social-criticism, favorites

A really good read. I would recommend this one to anyone who is trying to understand why some people become violent and dangerous and others do not. Silly moi, I thought the principles in this book were very well-known, but the criminologist -- Lonnie Athens -- who shaped them up into a systematic theory has had years of uphill battle trying to get anyone to acknowledge the obvious. That's academia for you, Lon. We everyday schmoes know you're right, so take heart.

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Jun 20, 2010 James rated it really liked it

Shelves: biography, sociology

Richard Rhodes is one of my favorite authors. I first encountered his work when I read The Making of the Atomic Bomb. His book, Why They Kill, is unique in my experience, in that it is a blend of both biography and sociology. It is the biography of Lonnie Athens who lived a violent life as a youth and later dedicated his life to the investigation of the source of violence in criminals. It is also a presentation of Athens' findings and an examination of the results of applying those findings to c ...more

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Oct 17, 2007 Kinga rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, social-science

This book really got me thinking about the social 'sciences' - and their research methods.
The standard approach to this day is statistical methods/measurements. I love Lonnie Athens for his stubborness - for creating his own path to discovery.
As far as I can tell he is the first person to try to use the scientific method (definitely with some success, I might add) in the social sciences. If this is not true, if there were others - tell me, I beg you. I am truly enthralled by this concept! Also ...more

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Dec 05, 2013 Heather rated it it was amazing

This book was extremely intriguing from the very beginning, especially for someone is who very interested in criminal behavior and criminology. The evidence that is presented gives a substantial chunk to chew in, and I would highly recommend this book to those interested. It may be slow or dry for those who are not hardcore interested in the subject, but the results of the information is fascinating to the enthusiasts.

I would like to read Lonnie Athens own works, instead of through another auth ...more

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Aug 03, 2011 Stephanie rated it liked it

Shelves: violence

The first part describing Athens, the criminologist, and his theory was the slowest. Athens did have an interesting life, but it went on too long. The theories and papers described were not summarized for the layperson. It read very academically, and I found that frustrating.

The middle section was the most interesting. The author looked at records of historically violent people and applied Athens theory to them.

Overall I liked it, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it strongly.

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Sep 19, 2011 wendy rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: those interested in violent criminals

fantastic biography of an amazing man: lonnie athens. he talked his way into the pen and interviewed 100s of violent criminals, men and women. His theory of violentization makes perfect sense and should be looked at by any educator, social worker, warden or any human being as a rule-book of how to make a violent human. As a society, we can see the "line in the sand" and help those before they cross it. Nice extra is Mr Athens theory on self-shattering experiences.

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Apr 10, 2013 Kim rated it it was amazing

Written by Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Rhodes. Very engrossing and thoroughly researched....changed many of my preconceptions about the origins of violence. Also details how our human ethics are exploited by organizations such as the military. Also highlights how Vets are victims of broken contracts between themselves and the government...and sometimes deliberate sabotage by their own leaders. On my short list of must read books!

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Aug 01, 2015 Anthea added it

Shelves: couldn-t-finish, crime, non-fiction, unsure-how-to-rate, 2015-reads

don't exactly know how to rate this one. was not an easy read. definitely heavy for someone who knows nothing about criminology. as I did not finish the book bc it was too tedious I felt that I shouldn't rate this book.

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Nov 07, 2011 Michael Flanagan rated it liked it

Shelves: true-crime

Working in corrections I found this book I real interesting read. It looks at how people become "vilonetized" and Lonnie Athens life long research to discover this. The book for the most part is an excellent read but for me it did seem to wonder a little bit. All in all when I finished reading this book I felt like I had learned a bit more about the mechanics of violent behavior.

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Aug 08, 2007 Vanessa Baldwin rated it it was amazing

another un-romaticized view of violent criminals. Introduces the concept of "Violentization", a developmental process that people go thru. How a person gets from victimized child to violent offender. VERY insightful. Uses Mike Tyson, Lee Harvey Oswald and others as examples. I'd recommend it to anyone who teaches in public schools, also.

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Oct 10, 2008 Melia rated it liked it

Very disappointing - Rhodes even goes so far as to attempt to disprove Dorothy Lewis and Jonathon Pincus which, in my book is abomination! He does discuss Dr. Lonnie H. Athens's thoeries and some does make sense completely but I will still argue that it is a combination of explanations together that culminate into a killer.

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Mar 02, 2008 Terri rated it it was amazing

This book was a real eye opener for me - regarding my own brush with violence in my early childhood and my close call with crossing the line into violent actor. Now I'm involved in peacework centered on nonviolence and this book gave me the insight to hold these violent members of our human community with compassion.

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May 14, 2009 Rachel Myers rated it it was amazing

Not the sort of topic I usually take on...but the discussion of sociology as a subject, the mind, criminology and rehabilitation, and Lonnie Athens's life were fascinating. I'm definitely going to read Rhodes's other books. The Making of the Atomic Bomb has been on my real-world shelf for quite a while...

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May 20, 2008 Brendan Detzner rated it it was amazing

Revelatory. Explains lots of things more clearly and more convincingly then I've ever seen them explained, especially the reasons women are less likely to become violent criminals and the relationship between violent coaching in the military and elsewhere. Loved it to death.

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Aug 25, 2014 Jake Berlin rated it it was amazing

Shelves: biography, crime, war, journalistic-history, anthropology, sociology, favorite-nonfiction

a brilliant and eye-opening look at why people act violently that tackles much larger issues of how experience shapes people. a book that will likely forever change the way that i look at people and their behavior.

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May 25, 2008 pattrice rated it it was ok

A well-written and comprehensible survey of the findings and theories of Lonnie Athens (and of the sociological theories of which Athens approves) but shockingly biased and thereby misleading about competing theories.

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Aug 10, 2012 Becky Pierce rated it it was ok

As much as I respect the topic, I simply felt the book dragged on a bit. It was a little too slow for me. But, for anyone interested in studying Criminology, it's worth powering through.

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Apr 09, 2008 Kate rated it it was amazing

Investigation of a set of psychological parameters that enable people to develop the ability to kill (people). Rhodes is a fascinating non-fiction writer.

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Jul 27, 2007 Michelle rated it did not like it

Shelves: didnt-like-it, crime

Still plugging along through. It certainly isn't a light read! Interesting, but maybe a bit too deep for the avg Joe, unfamiliar with the study of criminology.

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Nov 29, 2009 Ms. rated it it was amazing

mutlti focus narrative on one of america's premiere criminologists, his motivations, the success of his theory and criminology in general.

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Aug 22, 2011 William rated it it was ok

I enjoy Rhodes works but this one was not my cup of tea; no particular interest in this topic on my part.

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About Richard Rhodes

Richard Lee Rhodes is an American journalist, historian, and author of both fiction and non-fiction (which he prefers to call "verity"), including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986), and most recently, Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race (2007). He has been awarded grants from the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation a ...more

More about Richard Rhodes...

Books by Richard Rhodes

Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust

Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb

Deadly Feasts: Tracking the Secrets of a Terrifying New Plague

Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World

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