Product Description: This innovative book tells the fascinating tale of the long histories of violence, punishment, and the human body, and how they are all connected. Taking the decline of violence and the transformation of punishment as its guiding themes, the book highlights key dynamics of historical and social change, and charts how a refinement and civilizing of manners, and new forms of celebration and festival, accompanied the decline of violence...read more

Product Description: "Splendidly written and illustrated a gruesome but enjoyable journey through the history of pain and punishment. I was hooked from A to Z." - Endorsement from James Herbert Who are the Maccabees? A modern pop combo, or a mother and her seven sons who suffered racking, skinning, burning, amputation and having a tongue pulled out and fried? The A to Z of Punishment and Torture is fascinating social history providing a wealth of weird folklore, such as the power of the hanged man's hand; astounding tales, like Mary Hamilton, the cross-dressing 14-times bigamist; and more recent outrages, such as the use of squassation at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq...read more

Leaders and people in power have always had to ask a big question. “How do I make sure everyone obeys me?” For hundreds of years there was one answer. Pain. Or the threat of pain. History was full of the screams of criminals and others. They were made to suffer for doing wrong – or thinking the wrong things. But many laws were different then. You could be put to death for crimes that do not seem serious today. And many of the screams came from people who had done no wrong at all.

Product Description: The history of punishment and torture makes for macabre and mesmerizing reading: retribution without mercy, medieval justice, hellish prisons, and ingenious methods of inflicting torment upon the body and mind. Trace a path from the days of harshest penalties to more modern methods of reforming wrongdoers...read more

Presents a history of different punishment and torture techniques used throughout the ages, from human sacrifices of the Dark Ages, to capital punishment methods used today

(view table of contents)

Product Description: This was believed to be the first attempt to deal with the issue of discussing the punishments of early English history in any depth. While it does not cover all punishments of the time, its historical importance lies in the coverage of the most popular forms of punishment...read more

(view table of contents)

Product Description: college textbook

Product Description: This book was originally published prior to 1923, and represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work. While some publishers have opted to apply OCR (optical character recognition) technology to the process, we believe this leads to sub-optimal results (frequent typographical errors, strange characters and confusing formatting) and does not adequately preserve the historical character of the original artifact...read more