Confronting Evil

Bill O'Reilly and Josh Hammer survey 12 case studies of historical atrocity, from ancient Rome to the modern drug trade, arguing that evil is a persistent force that good people must actively confront. The book opens with a prologue set on October 7, 2023, when Abed al Rahman, a commander in Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, oversaw 150 gunmen who stormed Be'eri, a communal Israeli village known as a kibbutz, killing more than 100 civilians and taking 26 hostages. The authors invoke the biblical story of Cain and Abel and philosopher John Stuart Mill's warning that evil thrives when good people do nothing.

The first chapter profiles Caligula, the third Emperor of Rome, who ascended to power in AD 37. His early reign was popular, but a mysterious illness six months into his rule left him mentally transformed. He executed advisors, declared himself a living god, and ordered his army to "attack the sea." Cassius Chaerea, a Praetorian Guard bodyguard whom Caligula had mocked, led his assassination on January 24, AD 41. Rome's decline continued, ending with the empire's fall in AD 476, ushering in the Dark Ages.

The second chapter turns to Genghis Khan, born around 1162 as Temujin on the Mongolian grasslands. After a violent childhood, he built a vast army and was crowned "Ruler of the World" in 1206. In April 1221, he ordered the destruction of Merv, a vital Central Asian trading center, commanding each warrior to kill 300 people. His forces invaded Europe, defeating 125,000 Europeans at the 1223 Battle of the Kalka River with 25,000 soldiers. An estimated 50 million people died during his lifetime, 11 percent of the world's population.

Chapter three examines King Henry VIII of England, whose pursuit of a male heir led him to break with the Catholic Church after Pope Clement VII refused to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Henry established the Church of England and married Anne Boleyn, whom he later accused of adultery and had beheaded in 1536. His lord chancellor, Sir Thomas More, who refused to support the religious break, was also beheaded. The authors estimate Henry's reign produced approximately 70,000 executions and sparked religious wars that killed an estimated 15 million Europeans.

The fourth chapter examines the American domestic slave trade through the firm of Isaac Franklin and John Armfield. After Congress banned the importation of enslaved Africans in 1808, the domestic trade became enormously lucrative. Together, Franklin and Armfield sold approximately 100,000 enslaved people, each dying with a fortune exceeding $30 million. The chapter concludes with the Civil War that killed at least 750,000 and the observation that the country has never fully recovered from slavery's legacy.

Chapter five profiles Nathan Bedford Forrest, a wealthy Tennessee slave trader who became a Confederate general. On April 12, 1864, his forces overran Fort Pillow, Tennessee, and massacred surrendering Union soldiers, both Black and white. After the war, Forrest helped transform the Ku Klux Klan from a small fraternal group into a paramilitary terror network of 500,000 members, serving as its "Grand Wizard." President Ulysses S. Grant sent federal troops against the Klan, but the Supreme Court limited federal enforcement of state law, enabling the Jim Crow era of legalized racial segregation.

The sixth chapter examines the Robber Barons. J. P. Morgan controlled $3 billion in assets, roughly 20 percent of the US economy, while John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil dominated 90 percent of America's energy supply. After a mine collapse in Scranton, Pennsylvania, each grieving family received only $100; Rockefeller gave nothing to families of workers killed in a refinery explosion. President Theodore Roosevelt sued both men, winning a landmark Supreme Court decision in 1904 that dismantled Morgan's railroad monopoly and later breaking up Standard Oil.

Chapter seven profiles Joseph Stalin, who consolidated power after Vladimir Lenin's death in 1924 by eliminating all rivals, sending 700,000 to forced-labor camps called gulags, and banning religion and independent media. The chapter centers on the 1942 Battle of Stalingrad, the war's turning point, where Stalin's Order Number 227 mandated the execution of any soldier who retreated. The authors trace Stalin from his abusive childhood in Georgia through his postwar seizure of eastern Europe, which prompted Winston Churchill's 1946 "Iron Curtain" speech. Stalin died of a stroke on March 5, 1953, directly responsible for an estimated 50 million deaths.

The eighth chapter profiles Adolf Hitler, from the 1934 "Night of the Long Knives," in which he purged leaders of his paramilitary SA, through the Holocaust and his suicide. At the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, 15 Nazi leaders formalized the "final solution," establishing death camps including Auschwitz, where 1.4 million people were brought and only 7,000 survived. On April 30, 1945, Hitler and Eva Braun, his longtime companion, ingested cyanide in a bunker beneath Berlin; Hitler simultaneously shot himself. The authors attribute at least 45 million European deaths to his 12-year reign.

Chapter nine profiles Mao Zedong, who seized control of China in 1949 after defeating Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, forces. Mao's Five-Year Plans seized all private farms and factories, producing the Great Famine of 1957-1961, which killed 45 million people. His 1966 Cultural Revolution destroyed religious sites across the country, while the Red Guard, a corps of Maoist youth enforcers, grew to 30 million members. The "Down to the Countryside Movement" forcibly relocated millions, killing an additional 20 million. The authors identify Mao as history's worst mass killer, responsible for 80 million deaths.

Chapter ten profiles Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Shi'ite Muslim cleric who overthrew Iran's Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979. The chapter details the Shah's brutality through his SAVAK secret police, trained by the Central Intelligence Agency, and Khomeini's return from exile greeted by millions. Students seized the US embassy on November 4, 1979, holding 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. Khomeini established a theocratic state that financed Hamas and other jihadi networks, making Iran the largest state sponsor of terrorism. The authors attribute one million deaths to Khomeini.

Chapter eleven profiles Vladimir Putin, whose career began as an officer in the KGB, the Soviet Union's secret police. The chapter opens in December 1989 in Dresden, East Germany, where Putin confronted pro-democracy protesters, burned classified documents, and oversaw the torture of detained activists. After the Soviet collapse, he built criminal enterprises and was appointed acting president on New Year's Eve 1999. The authors recount the 2006 radioactive poisoning of former Putin deputy Alexander Litvinenko in London and the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In 2023, Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner Group, a Russian private military company, died in a midair explosion after criticizing Putin's war management.

The final chapter examines the drug cartels, centering on Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán of Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel and Colombian trafficker Pablo Escobar. The human cost is illustrated through Francine Doermann, a 19-year-old in Detroit with a heroin addiction who died of a fentanyl overdose. The chapter traces Escobar's rise and 1993 killing, El Chapo's life sentence in a Colorado supermax prison, and President Donald Trump's January 2025 designation of the cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. More than one million Americans died from drugs during El Chapo's 25-year career.

In the afterword, the authors define evil as "harming a human being without remorse" and identify money, power, and zealotry as its primary drivers. They warn that declining theological belief and the rise of technology have elevated evil to unprecedented levels. The book closes with the insistence that good people must choose to confront evil, because inaction only allows it to flourish.