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Product Description
This thought-provoking and timely book from a #1 New York Times bestselling novelist and noted child psychologist reveals the factors that often lead to explosive and shocking juvenile violence.
“Ethically and morally, kids are works in progress. Throw in psychopathy and you’ve got a soul that will never be complete.”
In this powerful, disturbing book, bestselling author and noted child psychologist Jonathan Kellerman shines a penetrating light on antisocial youth—kids who kill without remorse—asserting that “psychopathic tendencies begin very early in life, as young as three, and they endure.” Criticizing our quick impulse to blame violent movies or a “morally bankrupt” society, Kellerman convinces us that it is the kids themselves who need to be examined. Carefully.
How do children become cold-blooded killers? Kellerman warns that today’s aggressive bully is tomorrow’s Mafia don, cult leader, or genocidal dictator. Violently psychopathic youths possess an overriding need for power, control, and stimulation, and all display a complete lack of regard for the humanity of others. He examines the origins of psychopathy and the ever-shifting debate between nurture and nature, offering some controversial solutions to dealing with homicidal tendencies in children.
As timely as today’s headlines, more gripping than fiction, Savage Spawn is a provocative look at the links between society and biology, children and violence. Kellerman’s sobering message will remain with you long after the last page is turned.
Amazon.com Review
Jonathan Kellerman is best known as the author of a series of bestselling suspense novels starring psychologist sleuth Dr. Alex Delaware, but his nonliterary background is as a children's clinical psychologist. In Savage Spawn, inspired by the schoolyard shootings that took place in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and Springfield, Oregon, in 1998, he brings his training to bear on the question of how children can become cold-blooded killers. Kellerman has as much--perhaps more--to say about the broader issue of the nature of psychopathy, however, than he does about youth violence, though he does occasionally bring the two themes together. But Savage Spawn is essentially a hundred-page-plus op-ed piece rooted in Kellerman's belief that there are fundamentally bad people in the world and that the response to the perpetrators of violent acts such as the shooting at Jonesboro should be to "lock them up till they die." (Although published shortly after the multiple-death shooting in Littleton, Colorado, in 1999, the book was clearly written before this incident took place.) Readers may ultimately prefer more detailed considerations such as William Pollack's Real Boys or Lost Boys, by James Garbarino.
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