Obedience to Authority Book Review

     I actually knew about Stanley Milgrams experiment well before this class or reading this book. I've always thought that its crazy the extent someone will go when responding to authority. Its unsettling because it takes people whom we would think are monsters, such as guards of concentration camps and military torturers and takes them from the 'Monster' pedestal and puts them on our level. It's disturbing for people to have to confront the fact that the actions of people who have been considered evil are not committed by monsters, but by humans like you or me. The experiment also raised alot of ethical issues, is it right to tell someone that they would do such a thing? I don't know but it certainly is interesting.
     On another note, the book itself is an awful, awful, just awful read. Like, this book is the World Heavy Weight Champion of beating a dead horse. We get a chapter looking at social issues. And then 13 chapters of experiments. It's basically a.) we did the obedience experiment b.) we did it again, there was a chipmunk in the room, we can conclude chipmunks don't effect the outcome. The writing is good and straightforward, and I understand that after doing so many experiments, Dr. Milgram would want to publish them. But holy mother of god, I would not read that again. I found it really difficult to remain interested. It's like when you're watching a movie and you can tell what the ending is going to be halfway through, but then you have to watch it several more times. So, let me make this clear, the experiment is awesome. I've always thought this experiment is a phenomenal idea and I'm glad they've done it. The book though, isn't quite so great.