ANATOMY OF MALICE
The Enigma of Nazi War Criminals
​is now available in ​ hardbound, paperback,
audible, ​and foreign translations​

This gripping narrative by Joel E. Dimsdale probes the psychological nature of four Nazi leaders who instigated brutal mass killings. Psychiatrists and psychologists methodically interviewed and tested the Nuremberg war criminals in 1945, but their findings were hidden away and mired in controversy for decades. There is an eerie parallel between what was revealed in 1945 and what we confront today. What is malice? How can we understand the psychology of evil in today’s mass killers?

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International Editions
Anatomy of Malice is available in translation in the Czech Republic, Israel, Italy, Korea, Poland, Romania, and Taiwan

​​"In Anatomy of Malice, [Joel Dimsdale] provides a meandering, thoughtful ... overview, for the layman, of the minds of Nazi leaders, the differing views of the doctors who examined them, and psychology’s possible contribution to explicating the causes of evil." - New York Times Book Review

​​“Anatomy of Malice: The Enigma of the Nazi War Criminals (Yale University Press) [is] an extraordinary book that seeks to understand and explain the perpetrators of the Holocaust by revisiting the clinical notes of two doctors, psychiatrist Douglas Kelley and psychologist Gustave Gilbert, who examined the Nazi defendants…. The book is full of fascinating lore … [and] is deeply well informed, drawing expertly on both science and the arts.” - Jewish Journal

"[The] fantastic, arresting new book Anatomy of Malice: The Enigma of the Nazi War Criminals has a biting complexity …. The stories of the personalities on both sides of the Nuremberg proceedings are full of … conflicts that Dimsdale dramatizes with fast-paced flair… Dimsdale writes his account of the Nuremberg trials (and their underlying implications) in a series of almost staccato chapters of sharp, incisive prose leavened with a personal tone that’s always controlled ….  In the classic storytelling model, its narrative darts everywhere but stalls and deepens rather than closes. But thanks to Dimsdale’s agile, inquisitive approach, such irresolution seems almost the wiser course."   - Open Letters Monthly: an Arts and Literature Review