“The centerpiece of Todorov’s brief Torture and the War on Terror is a scathing indictment of the Bush administration’s rhetorical chicanery in declaring that so-called enhanced interrogation techniques—waterboarding, prolonged exposure to cold, mock executions—are not torture. . . . As Todorov shows, torture is inadmissible insofar as it constitutes an attack on the ‘very idea of humanity. It is the surest indication of the barbaric, of the extreme of human behavior that makes us reject the humanity of the other.’ If the legacy of humanism has anything to teach us, it is surely this. . . . There is no doubt that he has added depth and clarity to some of the most perplexing moral and political questions of our day.”