There is a quite fantastic article by Jared Diamond in the current New Yorker about revenge, which concludes with the touching story of how his father-in-law’s life was poisoned because he never shot a fascist whom he had at his mercy in Poland when the war was ending. I can’t link, because it’s not online, and I can’t scan anything in, because I am on a train. I will try to enlarge this later. In the meantime, get out and buy it.
UPDATE: still not on the New Yorker site, but linked off Brockman’s.
Just for the record, and in case it becomes available online at a later time, the abstract is here:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/21/080421fa_fact_diamond