TIME ’S #1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW TOP 10 BEST BOOK OF THE
YEAR • A “riveting” ( The Atlantic ) account of the Philippines’ state-sanctioned killings of
its citizens under President Rodrigo Duterte hailed as “a journalistic masterpiece” ( The New
Yorker ) “Tragic elegant vital . . . Evangelista risked her life to tell this
story.”—Tara Westover #1 New York Times bestselling author of Educated WINNER OF THE NEW
YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY’S HELEN BERNSTEIN BOOK AWARD • FINALIST FOR THE CHAUTAUQUA PRIZE •
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times The New Yorker
The Economist Chicago Public Library CrimeReads The Mary Sue “My job is to go to places
where people die. I pack my bags talk to the survivors write my stories then go home to wait
for the next catastrophe. I don’t wait very long.” Journalist Patricia Evangelista came of
age in the aftermath of a street revolution that forged a new future for the Philippines. Three
decades later in the face of mounting inequality the nation discovered the fragility of its
democratic institutions under the regime of strongman Rodrigo Duterte. Some People Need
Killing is Evangelista’s meticulously reported and deeply human chronicle of the Philippines’
drug war. For six years Evangelista documented the killings carried out by police and
vigilantes in the name of Duterte’s war on drugs—a crusade that has 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 a vigilante whose words 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.
