Book Review: Payback: Why We Retaliate, Redirect Aggression, and Take Revenge

Regrettably, revenge is in the spotlight. Just to mention three recent examples, the news1 (15th November 2015) defined the bombs dropped by France on Islamic State Jihadi training camp after the Paris shootings as “revenge.” Only 2 days after, president Putin literally claimed on TV that “revenge is unavoidable”2 (17th November 2015) toward the Syrian rebels responsible for the Russian jet downed the day before. More recently, the Iranian supreme Ayatollah leader vowed for “divine revenge”3 (3rd January 2016) on Saudi Arabia after the execution of one of their prominent clerics. Such an intricate international scenario of aggression demands reflection on the factors involved in human vengeance as well as on its causes and solutions. That is why I recover Payback from the shelves, a 209 pages book written by a married couple (he an evolutionary biologist, she a psychiatrist) that matches all the current breaking news on revenge despite dating back from 2011.