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On the Swiss border with Austria in 1938, a police captain refuses to enforce a law barring Jewish refugees from entering his country. In the Balkans half a century later, a Serb from the war-blasted city of Vukovar defies his superiors in order to save the lives of Croats. At the height of the Second Intifada, a fellow member of Israel’s most elite military unit informs his commander he doesn’t want to serve in the occupied territories.
Fifty years after Hannah Arendt examined the dynamics of conformity in her seminal account of the Eichmann trial, Beautiful Souls explores the flipside of the banality of evil, mapping out what impels standard people to defy the sway of authority and convention. Through the dramatic stories of improbable resisters who feel the flicker of sense of right and wrong when thrust into morally compromising situations, Eyal Press shows that the boldest acts of dissent are oftentimes carried out not by radicals seeking to overthrow the system but by unfeigned believers who cling with strange fierceness to their convictions. Drawing on groundbreaking exploration by moral psychologists and neuroscientists, Beautiful Souls culminates with the story of a financial industry whistleblower who loses her occupation after refusing to trade a toxic product she justifiedly suspects is being misleadingly advertised. At a time of economic calamity and political unrest, this deeply reported work of narrative journalism examines the selections and dilemmas we all face when our principles collide with the loyalties we harbor and the duties we are expected to fulfill.
Review “A subtle and thoughtful book. . . Beautiful Souls gains much from it is storytelling approach. It is rich in personal, circumstantial details that analytical thinkers in search of clear principles may overlook.” —The Economist “[Beautiful Souls] provides rich, provocative narrations of moral choice. . . In exploring [resisters'] courage, Press makes us wonder if we would have the strength to act versus the crowd, and in so doing disseminate a bit of light in our dark times.” —Michael S. Roth, The Washington Post “An act of sense of right and wrong describes an action motivated by commitment to a conviction, but it normally requires the defiance of other loyalties. . . Press's real accomplishment in this short book is not in his exploration or analysis, but in his refusal to flinch from that disquieting fact. . . He knows that those who act bravely are all the more likely to feel anguished, since they know what's at stake. In a heap of ways this book is a thoughtful gesture of support. That might sound like a little thing, but it's not.” —Louisa Thomas, The New York Times Book Review “What makes you eager to push this book into the hands of the next person you meet are the small, still moments, epics captured in miniature. . . Mr. Press's book is a hymn to the mystery of disobedience.” —Mark Oppenheimer, The New York Times “An intellectual . . . examination of moral courage and it is consequences.” —Kirkus Reviews “Press builds out his analysis thru thick description. His portraits are finely sketched, and enriched by old-fashioned journalistic effort, drawing to a considerable degree on consultations with his protagonists and their families, colleagues, and acquaintances. What emerges is a portrait not of superheroes but of usual men and women, many times ambivalent in regards to their own roles, who see their acts of courage and resistance merely as what they ‘had to do.’” —Rosa Brooks, Bookforum “What drives the unwilling executioners—those rare creatures brave sufficient to stand up for what is right in the face of real threat—is the question Mr. Press asks in this valentine to the humane spirit . . . Some of these figures wonder if their person actions have much power to reverse injustice. Mr. Press argues that "acts of sense of right and wrong have a way of reverberating." Of course, they may do so only if humans recognise regarding them; that is the service of this humane and absorbing book.” —Ruth Franklin, The Wall Street Journal “A collection of stories very well told, a biography of improbable courage.” —Michael Bond, The New Scientist “Proving time and again that the boldest renegades are just regular people with independent minds —rather than dyed-in-the-wool radicals — Beautiful Souls underscores dissent's populist potential. Acts of conscience, as Press puts it, 'have a way of reverberating.'” —Hannah Levintova, Mother Jones “Few of us will ever face a crisis of sense of right and wrong of the magnitude that Press (Absolute Convictions, 2007) illuminates in this arousing and attention holding examination of courage, and yet who amongst us hasn’t pondered how we would react when confronted with a unfathomed moral or ethical dilemma? In placing the spotlight on four specific individuals, Press allows readers to place themselves amidst arguable circumstances while he challenges the assumption that it takes an extraordinary person to carry out extraordinary deeds. There’s the Swiss police captain who refuses, in 1938, to follow orders and expel Jewish refugees; the Serb who saves the lives of Croats for the duration of the Balkan War; the Israeli soldier who questions serving in occupied settlements; and in the long run the financial adviser who blows the whistle on a massive Ponzi scheme. Press argues that there is not one thing saintly or particularly virtuous regarding these individuals, nor are they the rebellious sort we quintessentially associate with social resistance. Rather than dismissing societal values, they hold these ideals—brotherhood, unity, diligence—as inviolable. The real question is why the rest of us don’t.” — Patty Wetli, Booklist “In his latest, journalist Press (Absolute Convictions) explores what compels people to act according to their sense of right and wrong when faced with a moral dilemma in dangerous circumstances. In 1938, a Swiss police captain allows Jewish refugees to cross into “neutral” Switzerland, defying orders that the border be closed. During the Balkan conflict, in 1991, a Serb disobeys his superiors to save the lives of Croats from his hometown, the war-torn city of Vukovar. A financial adviser in Houston loses her occupation when she refuses to trade a toxic product she justifiedly suspects of being a Ponzi scheme. In a exceptionally compelling vignette, an Israeli soldier in an elite military unit refuses to serve in the occupied territories for the duration of the second intifada. Drawing on exploration by psychologists, sociologists, political activists and theorists (such as Susan Sontag and Hannah Arendt), and neuroscientists, Press reveals that the boldest acts of defiance are often times made by standard people who regard the ideals and values of their societies to be inviolable. This thought-provoking and moving narrative highlights the dissimilar ways persons react to moral quandaries and, at it is best, makes us question the role our own passivity or acquiescence plays in permitting unconscionable acts to take place on our watch.” —Publishers' Weekly (starred review) “Beautiful Souls helps us understand why a minority stands on principle when a majority fails. It’s an primary book for our time, in regards to conscience, group pressures, ethics, and psyches, and a beautifully crafted one that never falls prey to simple answers when it comes to matters of conscience.” —Rebecca Solnit, author of A Paradise Built in Hell “Too many times we think of courage only as something required to charge into gunfire or scale an icy peak. Eyal Press looks at courage of a dissimilar and far more indispensable kind. His examples disseminate throughout decades and continents, and he is wise sufficient to know that it may take as much bravado to defy an unethical corporation as it does to protest a totalitarian regime. This is an indispensable and inspiring book.” —Adam Hochschild, author of To End All Wars and King Leopold’s Ghost |
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32 of 33 persons found the following review helpful.
 A elegy for a democratic society
By Nathan Webster
This is a powerfully well-written work, which begins with clear-cut moral examples and ends with an in particular uncomfortable look at our own 'democratic' way of life.
I think we all with resolute determination believe that if we had been in Germany in 1938, of course we would have stood up to Nazi Germany. Of course, 'we' would have been on the right side - even altho history proves that millions of humans happily chose to be on the faulty side. If we had lived in Mississippi in 1955, of course 'we' would have stood up for integration and equivalent rights.
We always believe that we're our own heroes and that when push comes to shove we'll make the right choice. But as author Eyal Press shows, that's the exception in our society. Press in the right way points out that protesters, whistleblowers, etc., are oftentimes considered "self-indulgent;" since we have the RIGHT to protest, the naysayer's faith seems to be, then the actual ACT of protest is redundant.
His thesis is proven with Occupy Wall Street, for example. Instead of any respect for humans more than willing to camp out and get beat up and teargassed by police, they got mocked and derided as unemployed, drug-addled hippies. It's got not one thing to do with whether the protest is right-minded or not, but that the entire protest is belittled. But it goes both ways; Operation Rescue and Randall Terry - say what you want with regards to them, they're committed - are mocked as religious fanatics outside society's mainstream.
Of course we mock the two groups - because if one or both is right, then it means the rest of us live finish lies. It's surely more comfortable to be cynical and snarky, rather of admitting that we might voluntarily live in a system of total economic injustice and unfairness, while surrounded by the deaths of thousands of babies. And we stood on the sidelines while other humans took a stand that we made fun of.
Press talks when it comes to corporate whistleblowers and how we 'expect' humans to stand up and do the right thing, but when they genuinely do it, they're scarcely supported, ofttimes ignored, ordinarily sued, seldom protected by the government and system supposedly so eager to have their help.
In Fall 1991, I was getting ready to deploy to Desert Storm as an Army soldier. My brother, a peacenik hippie, went to a Red Sox game at Fenway Park and not only didn't take his hat for the national anthem, he didn't even stand up. He got predictable torrents of abuse and at last an escort into the concourse to get away from the threats, and when I heard the story, I called him a dirty traitor. After all, I was the hero, soon to risk life and limb overseas - so I had no sympathy for simpleminded protests. But I had the entire power of the US government and military supporting me; my brother didn't have anything but a sense, misguided or not, of conviction. Maybe he was right, perhaps he was faulty - but who was the brave one? It's not that the insults tossed his way that day were wrong - it's that they were the easy conduct of the mob, thrown out from the ease of numbers.
As I read, I became less fascinated in Press' original stories of 1938 Switzerland and 1993 Croatia; those were closely too-easy examples where the moral stand to save lives was clear-cut, and the stakes are high but obvious. As he explains, the whistleblowers and truthseekers in US society face situations where the stakes aren't that clear, and it is easy to plainly go with the group. Those are more compelling and unsettling examples.
Ultmately, I was on the fence with 4 or 5 stars; for $25, it could be a longer book (I read a free review copy), and does seem like an extended essay. But it's an crucial book.
This would be a good book for a college class. It's accessible to any student, and the writing and examples are compelling and raise a lot of questions for discussion and further thought.
UPDATED: Some other reviewers have given this two or three stars, for the most part for it's lack of depth. I may grasp their point - BUT, I think this is an accessible, very well-written account that might serve as an introduction (like I note in regards to college students), but I could see that if you've read a lot of books on this subject, this might not fetch much new to your knowledge. I think I've explained why I was very impressed with it. 13 of 14 persons found the following review helpful.
 Great stories, but discouraging and hindering lack of motivation
By D. Parvin
Eyal Press' Beautiful Souls is a collection of 4 biographical sketches of those who made conclusions to protest versus morally questionable situations. While the sketches are both inspiring and saddening, Press makes the fault of focusing a book on a rudimentary question of "What made these persons stand up for the right thing?" and then not attempting to answer it. While still a good read, the discouraging and hindering lack of work on motivation gives this 3 stars.
Press tells the tale of 4 people who did what they considered the right thing beneath attempting circumstances - a Swiss border guard who smuggled Jews in versus policy, a Serbian who misidentified Croats to save them from torture, an Israeli commando who refused to carry on to protect what he felt were illegal settlements, and a broker who caught wind of a Ponzi scheme - walks the reader through their stories, and consultations the 3 living subjects. The stories themselves are both inspirational and saddening, since one conclusion regarding the aftermaths of such activenesses is a quote by a former Guantanamo Bay prosecutor: "(Individual dissenters) don't fetch with regards to change. You only fetch pain on yourself." That seems to be one of the darker underlying themes, but the flip side is the other conclusion reached - that "(perhaps you achieve your) own salvation" from making the right moral choice.
What Press doesn't do as well is to answer his own original question. While he does debunk a heap of of the mutual stereotypes when it comes to those who make moral choices, in the end he does a somewhat poor occupation of explaining why these humans in peculiar decisive to stand up to a larger wrong. Part of his problem comes from undertake to use person case studies to make much more spectacular points, another is that he doesn't include more academic material outside of the older, more prominent studies on the subject, and the final is that the book could have used a bit more editing to take away what feels like an often meandering course to it is conclusion.
3 stars; worth a read but not groundbreaking by any means. 11 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
Brief, But Inspiring
By Professor Emeritus P. Bagnolo
Beautiful Souls: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times
I was in one sense inspired and in another frustrated by what I read in this terrifi little book, Beautiful Souls. I say "little book" not in the cliché', pompous manner in which galore amateurs review films, but in the sense that the book is very short in regards to 66,500 words. Small even though it is, it was packed with the two emotions/factors in line one of this review.
I was inspired to recognise that there are more persons on world from time to time, which do the right thing, even though they appear in dire short supply these days, much not similar to our ancestors of "The Greatest Generation."
What I loved when it comes to this book were the examples of those people who threw precaution to the wind and followed their conscience, in spite of the dangers afoot for them, as the writers of Eyal Press' thoroughly question the following four examples of humans of varying social status taking not common risks to carry out the demands upon them by their sense of right and wrong not only for empathy, but actions which fulfill the needs of those in danger.
1)- Disobeying The Law: Paul Grüninger Commander Of State Police in St. Gallen Switzerland displays unbelievable courage in, "Disobeying The Law" by permitting Sanctuary to Jewish escapees from the Nazi Scourge in 1938.
2)- Defying The Group: In 1991 Revolution, Alecsander Jevtic', a Serb, in charge of identifying Croats seeking asylum, knowing full well that any Croats found would be murdered in the ensuing genocide, started out passing them off, as Serb refugees.
3)- Rules of Conscience: Aven Wishnitzer, a weak, skinny kid becomes a fellow member of the Sayeret Matkal, "the Unit" a highly trained and capable warrior Army group fellow member and yet he becomes a strength objecting to the Jewish encroacher's, mistreatment of Palestinians within the occupied territories in 2000.
4)- The Price of Raising One's Voice: A highly successful, female Broker/Bonus Baby, ($150,000 signing bonus) of the Stanford Group Company, Leyla Wydlera, studies with due-diligence the CD's she is pressured into selling, uncovers and fights versus one of the schemes which added a millstone to the already bursting DOT-COM bubble of Wall Street Market in in 2000, creating yet a further problem in 2002.
Herein Eyal Press digs through the corruption conservatively covered-up heroics of four Beautiful souls who refused to be intimidated by corrupt superiors, and say NO to corruption, even though it ruins the careers of a lot of of them.
The writer unravels studies that undertake to explain why and how these humans did what others would not do. Some of them intimmate that morality, religion, honor etc. had not one thing to do with the decision to ignore convention and rebel, saying that it is much requiring little effort to do so when one is not got rid of from face to face witnessing of the exceptionally bad or displeasing results of their activenesses those whose lives will be destroyed by governmental or corporate crimes. They say any individual in the same circumstance might have done the same thing. In other studies they indicate that as long as superiors say they will take the obligation for evil done, the underlings who carry out the evil deeds will not be kept responsible. These studies seem to dehumanize the actions of superb and courageous men and women, as situational and a thing any individual would do under the same circumstances.
This is of course not true, sadistic persons live at each level of society and do horrific things each day. People such as serial killers, rapists and sadists, who have no superiors directing them and are there staring their victims in the eye when they carry out their brutality. Many persons far away from their commanding officers, and who are not got rid of from the internetlocation of slaughters, commit terrible crimes and oftentimes find such acts thrilling and laughable. Others disregarding of conditions are always bent upon empathy, a trait that is ofttimes missing, ignored or refused in a lot of people.
Though the book is exceedingly well written, early on one wonders when it comes to the author's motivations because he appears to receive the dispiriting studies which seemed to make heroes a batch of inhumane, behavioral accidents of circumstance. However, Further into the book, the author rejects these studies and agrees that such studies which remove humanity from heroes, altogether miss the boat. Taking away heroics is a step toward disavowing the existence of sense of right and wrong and morality. The Author quotes Ralph Nader's quip, "Whistle Blowers are born not made... They are a breed apart..." It is good to recognise that when we have done the honorary things we are not alone.
If you are a just person of honor and altruism, you will take pleasure in this brief look at heroism and the theories behind it is sources. However, you may likewise want to know more and I, for one, wished for more examples of heroes, as well consultations with philosophers, clergy, educators, union, civil rights advocates and other persons who made unselfish and heroic sacrifices with no reward, and in fact, galore of whom suffered principally by their efforts. See all 34 client reviews... |
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