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 Seco[...]
"A fascinating study in the better angels of our nature."--George Packer, "The New Yorker" A "New York Times Book Review" Editors' Choice History has produced many specimens of the banality of evil, but what about its flip side, what impels ordinary people to defy the sway of authority and conventio[...]