Theodore Dalrymple's collections of essays, loosely held together by the question of evil, are witty, intelligent, and often insightful. His prose shows an effortless virtuosity and a wonderfully dry British sense of humor; it is hard to imagine anyone but a Briton using words like "recherche" without courting suspicion. Making links between what seem disparate subjects, he often joins his reading with vignettes of his life - sometimes they are a little too coincidental, but I can hardly find fault with some artistic license and the pretentious pride of recognizing obscure classical references - Dalrymple has a rare talent for putting into words what most of us know, but find difficult to articulate.

Most gratifyingly, however, is his own humility. Far from claiming to have found the answer or assuming that the reader will give him due reverence, Dalrymple freely admits his ignorance and invites readers to correct him. One gets the impression that he is among the truly rare who is sincere in this offer.

He never concludes definitively what makes a man evil, or whether evil exists, or even what evil is, but simply provides his own thoughts - a caliber of which should never be rejected - on the matter and concludes what most of us have decided: that is, evil exists, but little else can be said about it definitively. ( )