"Torture has ceased to exist," Victor Hugo claimed, with some justification, in 1874. Yet more than a century later, torture is used routinely in one out of every three countries. This book is about torture in Western society from earliest times to the present.
A landmark study since its original publication a decade ago, Torture is now available in an expanded and updated paperback edition. Included for the first time is a broad and disturbing selection of documents charting the historical practice of torture from the ancient Romans to the Khmer Rouge.
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Editorial Reviews
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"In the restrained prose of Torture lies a passionate message about the intentional violation of the bodies of human beings, in our time and in the past."—New York Times
"Torture goes beyond the solemn declaration of evil's banality. It offers an explanation of how institutional characteristics—even more strongly than personal ones like sadism or psychosis—produce that evil. It contributes to our understanding—if we dare call it that—of how creatures who begin by crying for their mothers can graduate to bashing in heads."—Philadelphia Inquirer
"A masterful analytical history of torture's emergence in Roman law, its insertion into the medieval law of proof, its gradual abolition after 1750, and its dreadful recrudescence in modern times. The book is an exemplary application of historical scholarship to an issue where emotions tend to run ahead of reason."—Times Literary Supplement
About the Author
Edward Peters is Henry Charles Lea Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. His publications include Witchcraft in Europe, 400-1700: A Documentary History, all available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
Twentieth-century people, although they may easily recognize the existence of privilege- or status-distinctions in institutions which profess to operate democratically and impersonally, often know little about societies - or earlier periods in our own history - in which privilege and status were the only elements that determined social identity, nor about the process in early European societies that transformed them from communities based upon status distinctions to communities based upon shared rights. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
legally sufficient indication, interrogatory torture, deified brothers, examination under torture, concerning torture, denounced person, torture shall, inquisitorial procedure, torture cannot, inquisitorial process, torture techniques, torture itself Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Amnesty International, Third Reich, South Africa, Second World War, United States, Alec Mellor, Soviet Union, Council of Europe, First World War, George Orwell, Middle Ages, Roman Empire, Draft Optional Protocol, International Red Cross, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Wuillaume Report, Alien Tort Statute, Assize of Clarendon, Danish Medical Group, French Revolution, Jeremy Bentham, Michel Foucault, National Assembly, Peloponnesian War New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Twentieth-century people, although they may easily recognize the existence of privilege- or status-distinctions in institutions which profess to operate democratically and impersonally, often know little about societies - or earlier periods in our own history - in which privilege and status were the only elements that determined social identity, nor about the process in early European societies that transformed them from communities based upon status distinctions to communities based upon shared rights. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
legally sufficient indication, interrogatory torture, deified brothers, examination under torture, concerning torture, denounced person, torture shall, inquisitorial procedure, torture cannot, inquisitorial process, torture techniques, torture itself Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Amnesty International, Third Reich, South Africa, Second World War, United States, Alec Mellor, Soviet Union, Council of Europe, First World War, George Orwell, Middle Ages, Roman Empire, Draft Optional Protocol, International Red Cross, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Wuillaume Report, Alien Tort Statute, Assize of Clarendon, Danish Medical Group, French Revolution, Jeremy Bentham, Michel Foucault, National Assembly, Peloponnesian War New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 100
books:
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- Torture in the Eighties: An Amnesty International Report by Amnesty International on 6 pages
- Superstition & Force by Henry Charles Lea on 4 pages
- The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides on page 14, page 17, and page 18
- The Growth of the Law in Medieval Russia by Daniel H. Kaiser on page 95, and Back Matter
- The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
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