Some People Need Killing

Book excerpt: TIME’S #1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW TOP 10 BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “Patricia Evangelista’s searing account is not only the definitive chronicle of a reign of terror in the Philippines, but a warning to the rest of the world about the true dangers of despotism—its nightmarish consequences and its terrible human cost.”—Patrick Radden Keefe, New York Times bestselling author of Empire of Pain “Tragic, elegant, vital . . . Evangelista risked her life to tell this story.”—Tara Westover, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Educated “A journalistic masterpiece”—David Remnick, The New Yorker For six years, journalist Patricia Evangelista documented killings carried out by police and vigilantes in the name of then president Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs—a crusade that led to the slaughter of thousands—immersing herself in the world of killers and survivors and capturing the atmosphere of terror created when an elected president decides that some lives are worth less than others. The book takes its title from the words of a vigilante, which demonstrated the psychological accommodation many across the country had made: “I’m really not a bad guy,” he said. “I’m not all bad. Some people need killing.” A profound act of witness and a tour de force of literary journalism, Some People Need Killing is a brilliant dissection of the grammar of violence and an investigation into the human impulses to dominate and resist. WINNER OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY’S HELEN BERNSTEIN BOOK AWARD • FINALIST FOR THE CHAUTAUQUA PRIZE • LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE AND THE MOORE PRIZE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS WRITING • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Economist, Chicago Public Library, CrimeReads, The Mary Sue