A Handbook on Hanging

by Charles Duff

Other authorsChristopher Hitchens (Introduction)
Paperback, 2001

Status

Available

Call number

364.66

Collection

Publication

NYRB Classics (2001), Paperback, 232 pages

Description

A Handbook on Hanging is a Swiftian tribute to that unappreciated mainstay of civilization: the hangman. With barbed insouciance, Charles Duff writes not only of hanging but of electrocution, decapitations, and gassings; of innocent men executed and of executions botched; of the bloodlust of mobs and the shabby excuses of the great. This coruscating and, in contemporary America, very relevant polemic makes clear that whatever else capital punishment may be said to be--justice, vengeance, a deterrent--it is certainly killing.

User reviews

LibraryThing member devenish
First published in 1928,(this is the1938 edition) and a very strange book indeed,probably the strangest one in my whole collection.I cannot do better than give the sub-title in full.-Being a short introduction to the fine art of Execution,and containing much useful information on
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Neck-breaking,Throttling,Strangling,Asphyxiation,Decapitation and Electrocution;as well as Data and Wrinkles for hangmen,an account of the late Mr. Berry's method of Killing and his working list of Drops;to which is added a Hangman's Ready Reckoner and certain other items of interest.
The title page ends 'All very proper to be read and kept in every family'
Can I say more,I really think not.
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LibraryThing member multifaceted
The other day in the news I heard a story about a dog at a shelter that had been "humanely put to sleep". Only, he wasn't really put to sleep permanently, and woke up in a bin full of his former doggy comrades--all of them indeed corpses. They called it a "miracle" and had him set up for adoption
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again.

Immediately, A Handbook on Hanging sprang to mind. It's a book I had read nearly a year ago, but had never really left my mind, especially when something like this comes to light; and in fact, when you make the "victim" going to die a cute little dog versus a supposedly guilty criminal, it might seem to take on quite a different light at first.

But I think the basic ideas remain the same--they are facts and ideas that this book had brought together a long, long time ago, in a rather sarcastic "mock-umentary" type format. Duff brings to clear light ideas and misconceptions about the process of dying, particularly when you are supposedly humanely forcing it on another living thing. Whatever the manner of execution, it really can be seen as quite an "art", where specific numbers are to be calculated, and if one is even remotely wrong, things can be disastrous.

Whether you are for the death penalty, against it, or never really thought to question the ideas of your country, it makes you wonder if there is really any humane death at all, and whether our methods of killing aren't as infallible as our justice system may be.
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LibraryThing member waitingtoderail
This book is a real oddity, and one well worth the read. A searing polemic indicting the death penalty in England (which was primarily by hanging, but he also touches on other methods of execution), in the guise of a defense of the executioner. Duff's style makes me think of a mid-20th century
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British version of Stephen Colbert. The NYRB rerelease will primarily be preaching to the choir, but as the book's description states, no matter what your views on capital punishment, you cannot come away from this book without realizing that no matter what else capital punishment is, "it is certainly killing."
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Language

Original publication date

1928

Physical description

232 p.; 8 inches

ISBN

0940322676 / 9780940322677

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