Books, Arts & Manners: The Evil of Banality

Breaking the Ring, by John Barron (Houghton Mifflin, 244 pp., $17.95)

‘The banality of evil” was Hannah Arendt’s famous phrase, referring to Nazi-style evil. U.S. District Judge John P. Vukasin Jr., sentencing a big-time Soviet spy last year, turned the phrase around: “the evil of banality.” Bull’s-eye.

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William Murchison

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Breaking the Ring, by John Barron (Houghton Mifflin, 244 pp., $17.95)

‘The banality of evil” was Hannah Arendt’s famous phrase, referring to Nazi-style evil. U.S. District Judge John P. Vukasin Jr., sentencing a big-time Soviet spy last year, turned the phrase around: “the evil of banality.” Bull’s-eye.