THE VIOLENT MIND

The complementary strengths of a social-science writer and a psychiatrist produce a balanced sociological/neuro-biological exploration of violence as a public-health problem. Humans are exceptional: other species rarely kill their own. The authors tell how violence has been explained and countered, from exploding the XYY myth and giving a history of psychosurgery (including lobotomies) to trying to understand hate crimes. Seeing violence as multicausal in nature (drug addiction, poverty, and a search for control, etc.), they cite cases to demonstrate both sides of each issue, e.g., violence and its relation to TV. Perhaps the gravity of the problem comes through most arrestingly in street terminology, where a ``mushroom'' is a person unwittingly caught in drug-war crossfire. Aside from an occasional tendency to lop off stories (Joe abused of the elderly, but what did he do?), a thoughtful examination that compares theory with a reality where there are no satisfactory answers. Glossary; notes; sources; bibliography; index. (Nonfiction. 12+)