The Diary of a Rapist

The Diary of a Rapist
Author: Evan S. Connell
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2004
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781590170946

Spurned by his wife at home and by superiors at work, a young man sits in his cramped San Francisco apartment during the turbulent 1960s and channels everything around him into a diary that is a perfect record of a world going to pieces.

The Diary of a Rapist

The Diary of a Rapist
Author: Evan Connell
Publisher: Catapult
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2016-05-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1619028492

This unnerving work is a contemplation of the middle–class existence in a changing world, narrated by an unstable man held hostage by his deteriorating mental state. The story begins with the unhappy marriage of junior clerk Earl Summerfield to the much older Bianca. Feeling victimized by his cold wife and mocking superiors at work, Earl decides to keep a diary, a chronicle of his apparently crumbling marital relations, the paranoia and abuses he is seemingly forced to tolerate at work, and the world around him going to pieces in 1960's San Francisco. What he sees, what he says, what he wants to say – everything swarms his head and consciousness, inciting and fueling fantasies of love, ambition, and avenging the violent crimes with which he was become obsessed. His angry and unstable mind alternates between feelings of apprehension and disgust, and exploring his own violent, sexual fantasies, and Earl takes action first by breaking into other peoples' houses and then fixating on various women, before settling with utmost and troubling certainty on the local beauty queen, Mara St. John's.

Diary of a Predator

Diary of a Predator
Author: Amy Herdy
Publisher: Amy Herdy
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2011-10
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0983180229

This groundbreaking tour de force presents the gripping, true account of one of America's most notorious serial rapists and the tough female journalist assigned to cover his case. Following an exhaustive manhunt and his capture in 2005, Brent Brents sent letters and his journal to Denver Post reporter Amy Herdy-with the condition that she alone tell his story. Here, then, in his raw and uncensored words, Brents reveals shocking details about his childhood abuse and the monstrous acts he later committed. Going way beyond just the facts, he gives us an unprecedented look inside the twisted mind of a sociopath. At the same time, Amy has a personal story to tell. Rocked to the core by Brents' disturbing case, she sets out to understand this ruthless criminal only to be confronted with her own troubled past. Ultimately, she must make a choice that will change her life forever.

A Woman in Berlin

A Woman in Berlin
Author:
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2005-08-04
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780805075403

With shocking and vivid detail, the journal of a woman living through the Russian occupation of Berlin in 1945 tells of the shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always subject and describes the common experience of millions.

The Incest Diary

The Incest Diary
Author: Anonymous
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 145
Release: 2018-11
Genre: Adult child abuse victims
ISBN: 1408890429

Throughout her childhood and adolescence, the anonymous author of The Incest Diary was raped by her father. Beneath a veneer of normal family life, she grew up in and around this all-encompassing secret. Her sexual relationship with her father lasted, off and on, into her twenties. It formed her world, and it formed her deepest fears and desires. Even after she broke away, even as she grew into an independent and adventurous young woman, she continued to seek out new versions of the violence, submission and secrecy she had struggled to leave behind. In this graphic and harrowing memoir, the author revisits her early traumas and their aftermath - not from a clinical distance, but from deep within - to explore the ways in which her father's abuse shaped her, and still does. As a matter of psychic survival, she became both a sexual object and a detached observer, a dutiful daughter and the protector of a dirty secret. And then, years later, she made herself write it down. With lyric concision, in vignettes of almost unbearable intensity, this writer tells a story that is shocking but that will ring true to many other survivors of abuse. It has never been faced so directly on the page.

Diary of an Oxygen Thief

Diary of an Oxygen Thief
Author: Anonymous
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 136
Release: 2016-05-23
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1501157868

Hurt people hurt people. Say there was a novel in which Holden Caulfield was an alcoholic and Lolita was a photographer’s assistant and, somehow, they met in Bright Lights, Big City. He’s blinded by love. She by ambition. Diary of an Oxygen Thief is an honest, hilarious, and heartrending novel, but above all, a very realistic account of what we do to each other and what we allow to have done to us.

The Rape of Nanking

The Rape of Nanking
Author: Iris Chang
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2014-03-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 046502825X

The New York Times bestselling account of one of history's most brutal—and forgotten—massacres, when the Japanese army destroyed China's capital city on the eve of World War II, "piecing together the abundant eyewitness reports into an undeniable tapestry of horror". (Adam Hochschild, Salon) In December 1937, one of the most horrific atrocities in the long annals of wartime barbarity occurred. The Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking (what was then the capital of China), and within weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered. In this seminal work, Iris Chang, whose own grandparents barely escaped the massacre, tells this history from three perspectives: that of the Japanese soldiers, that of the Chinese, and that of a group of Westerners who refused to abandon the city and created a safety zone, which saved almost 300,000 Chinese. Drawing on extensive interviews with survivors and documents brought to light for the first time, Iris Chang's classic book is the definitive history of this horrifying episode.

South of Forgiveness

South of Forgiveness
Author: Elva Thordis
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2017-05-09
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1510730028

One ordinary spring morning in Reykjavik, Iceland, Thordis Elva kisses her son and partner goodbye before boarding a plane to do a remarkable thing: fly seven thousand miles to South Africa to confront the man who raped her when she was just sixteen. Meanwhile, in Sydney, Australia, Tom Stranger nervously embarks on an equally life-changing journey to meet Thordis, wondering whether he is worthy of this milestone. After exchanging hundreds of searingly honest emails over eight years, Thordis and Tom decided it was time to speak face to face. Coming from opposite sides of the globe, they meet in the middle, in Cape Town, South Africa, a country that is no stranger to violence and the healing power of forgiveness. South of Forgiveness is an unprecedented collaboration between a survivor and a perpetrator, each equally committed to exploring the darkest moment of their lives. It is a true story about being bent but not broken, facing fear with courage, and finding hope even in the most wounded of places. Personable, accessible, and compelling, South of Forgiveness is an intense and refreshing look at a gendered violence, rape culture, personal responsibility, and the effect that patriarchal cultures have on both men and women.

A Natural History of Rape

A Natural History of Rape
Author: Randy Thornhill
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2001-02-23
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9780262700832

A biologist and an anthropologist use evolutionary biology to explain the causes and inform the prevention of rape. In this controversial book, Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer use evolutionary biology to explain the causes of rape and to recommend new approaches to its prevention. According to Thornhill and Palmer, evolved adaptation of some sort gives rise to rape; the main evolutionary question is whether rape is an adaptation itself or a by-product of other adaptations. Regardless of the answer, Thornhill and Palmer note, rape circumvents a central feature of women's reproductive strategy: mate choice. This is a primary reason why rape is devastating to its victims, especially young women. Thornhill and Palmer address, and claim to demolish scientifically, many myths about rape bred by social science theory over the past twenty-five years. The popular contention that rapists are not motivated by sexual desire is, they argue, scientifically inaccurate. Although they argue that rape is biological, Thornhill and Palmer do not view it as inevitable. Their recommendations for rape prevention include teaching young males not to rape, punishing rape more severely, and studying the effectiveness of "chemical castration." They also recommend that young women consider the biological causes of rape when making decisions about dress, appearance, and social activities. Rape could cease to exist, they argue, only in a society knowledgeable about its evolutionary causes. The book includes a useful summary of evolutionary theory and a comparison of evolutionary biology's and social science's explanations of human behavior. The authors argue for the greater explanatory power and practical usefulness of evolutionary biology. The book is sure to stir up discussion both on the specific topic of rape and on the larger issues of how we understand and influence human behavior.