In the Eye of the Hurricane: Tales of Good and Evil, Help and Harm

In the Eye of the Hurricane: Tales of Good and Evil, Help and Harm continues Philip Hallie's lifelong exploration of the human choice to do good or evil. Hallie examines the behavior of Major Julius Schmaling, a German commander who saved the lives of Chambon villagers during World War II; of Joshua James, a sea captain who saved dozens of shipwrecked sailors by rowing out to sea in the fiercest of storms; and of Katchen Coley, his neighbor and founder of the Connection, a halfway house where she devoted herself to helping drug- and alcohol-addicted people. In the Eye of the Hurricane also provides special insight into the author's own life, his struggle with morality, and how he comes to terms with his own ethics. He tries to understand his own ambiguous moral actions, first as a child in the Jewish ghetto of Chicago, fighting to protect himself and his younger brother from anti-Semitic bullies, then as a World War II artilleryman, and finally as a philosopher of ethics who realized he could not be objective in studying the viciousness of human beings throughout history. A highly accessible work that places difficult ethical questions in a personal, and very readable context, this book remains grounded in the day-to-day reality of the stories, allowing readers to come to their own conclusions about human nature.