- In this wholly original and remarkably ambitious work, "Atrocitologist" Matthew White considers man"s inhumanity to man across several thousand years of history. From the First Punic War and the collapse of Mayan rule to the reign of Peter the Great and the cataclysmic events of the Second World War, White"s epic book spans centuries and civilisations as it measures the hundred most violent events in human history. If we study history in order to avoid the mistakes of the past, then there can be no more important place to start.