Francisco Goldman's The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop

It didn't just happen. It's not just a forgivable matter of dim bulbs bumbling around like the Three Stooges.

The fatal bludgeoning of Guatemalan Bishop Juan Girardi Conedera, a Roman Catholic human rights advocate, came two days after he released a four-volume report on his country's civil war that formally ended in 1996. That war had claimed some 200,000 lives over four decades. The primary suspect in Girardi's murder, Goldman believes, was one of the two runoff candidates in Guatemala's recent presidential election. The account spotlights not only Girardi's assassination, but an entire generation of brutalities, mostly against the poor Mayan population.

The book is chilling. These atrocities were not unintended consequences of otherwise innocent actions. The murderers knew what they were doing. They carefully plotted each brutal step.

We religious types call it "sin", a word that's been so misused we understandably shy away from it. But I don't know of another word that captures the flat-lined hearts, shriveled minds, clenched teeth, and white knuckles that Goldman describes.

This is a book about naked cruelty and sheer hatred, and it leaves you wondering: How does it happen? How do we humans get this way?