Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan 264 pages

This was a fascinating book.  Susannah Cahalan was young, driven and intelligent.  Suddenly she starts behaving in ways she can't rationalize or understand.  Eventually, she becomes someone her family and friends barely recognize.  This was a compelling story about a neurological disease that is barely understood still.  Susannah was lucky to have recovered as well as she did, others have not.  She is a reporter, and she wrote this book largely based on her investigative skills, by interviewing her family and medical teams, and by watching videos of herself during a period she has absolutely no recollection of.  I couldn't put this down, it was engrossing.

The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide By Robert Jay Lifton, 561 pages

  When I received this book, I thought I would hold onto it for browsing and reference, but the first page of the foreword pulled me immediately into the introduction and quickly through to page 20 when the research report actually began. One chapter led to another, leaving me disappointed whenever I had to put the book down, until I’d read the entire study (except for the index) within a few weeks. 

  Ever since I was a high school student who turned my first term paper into an argument that people living in Germany had to have known of the Nazi concentration camps and Jewish genocide happening in their midst, I’ve been intrigued by the psychology of societies and individuals who allow unspeakable crimes against humanity to occur. The main questions of this book are how and why did so many in the medical profession (healers) became crucial participants in Nazi orchestrated mass murder. 

  If you are brave enough to face the psychological darkness and vile actions reported in the book and are also willing to come face to face with how such evil relates to the rest of us, then I suggest that this research may help build your own psychological ability to recognize, face, and fight against human atrocities in our world today.