To me, the penultimate paragraph is the most interesting part of the review, and I will end this empathy ramble there, noting that fiction writers, I think, should pitch a tent within these temporary episodes if they want to write well and continue to understand characters:
At the core of this deceptively simple book is the question of the nature of cruelty. In the last and most philosophical chapter Dr. Baron-Cohen discusses situations in which an individual who is not otherwise lacking in empathy may behave cruelly. Citing the philosopher Hannah Arendt’s term “the banality of evil,” and discussing the work of Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo in which ordinary people exhibited cruel behavior, he acknowledges that in most of us empathy may be suspended temporarily, under certain circumstances.
Author Homepage
Beginning today, all updates, information, fun, etc., regarding my own writing can be found at my author homepage: http://www.dannygoodman.me.
In the ongoing efforts to remove my own writing from fwriction, to allow the blog to really focus on and promote the writing of others (including and most notably the writers published in fwriction : review), all posts regarding my written works will be streamlined over to my author homepage. I hope you stop by and say hello, and share anything you come across that really rocks your waffle (like, maybe, my series of Linked Stories).
First up: my nonfiction essay, “Angles of Response to Your Angles, or Brief Reflections on Tennis, Sharks, and the Loss of David Foster Wallace,” in Specter Literary Magazine. Head to my homepage for links and info.
(Side note: both fwriction and my author homepage will both continue to use @fwriction on Twitter. Find my author page, too, on Facebook and Google+.)

“He took up a spot on the last court, farthest from the lights. In the darkness, though, he could make out the white lines, the taut net, the side-by-side benches. Mary always insisted on her own bench. We smell too bad to share, she’d said with a laugh. Hank slipped off his shoes and moved to the service line. The manicured grass comforted his tired feet. Like a cloud, he thought. In his right hand, Hank gripped his racquet, and with his left, he bounced a ball. He could almost touch the smooth, felt nap. His toss was high, a motion that hadn’t changed since his teenage years, and he swung hard. Imagining Mary’s return, he shuffled to his right, hitting a forehand up the line. Mary would track the shot for sure, though, and return a backhand crosscourt. Hank hit a short ball back, hoping to draw Mary to the net. She rushed forward, slicing a drop shot just over the net. Raising his racquet, Hank clapped. Mary bowed and smiled, enjoying the attention. In the empty night, he could hear her critique his serve, that it was too windy for such a high toss, that he knew she would come to the net eventually, her voice as real as it had been all those years ago. She had always been there to return his shots, to keep the rally going. As he left the court, he imagined their back-and-forth, their epic battles, continued on without them, emerging like dew every morning and evaporating, at night, into the lights of Center Court.”

