Drawn and Quartered


Book Description

"A brilliant and original exponent of a rare genre, the philosophical essay. Once read, Cioran cannot fail to provoke reaction. New York Times Book...




Hung, Drawn, and Quartered


Book Description

Hung, Drawn, and Quartered takes an informative, no-holds-barred look at the history of execution, from Ancient Rome to the modern day. It is divided into eleven broadly chronological chapters, each exploring a different form of execution and is packed with gory details, eyewitness accounts, and little-known facts.




Hung, Drawn and Quartered


Book Description

Take a gruesome trip through time with this grisly compendium of death! From the best way to shrink a head to making a mummy in eight simple steps, and with fascinating facts about botched beheadings, greedy royals and the plague, Hung, Drawn and Quartered looks at the most gruesome facts from the past.




Drawn & Quartered


Book Description

This book belongs on the reference shelf of anyone interested in the interplay between cartoons, politics, and public opinion. It provides the reader a historic framework in which to understand the cartoons' meaning and significance.




A Date with the Hangman


Book Description

A true-crime history of 20th-century, British judicial hangings from 1900 to 1964, and a look at the overall history of executions in Great Britain. It is a sobering thought that until the closing years of the twentieth century, Britain’s courts were technically able to impose the death penalty for several offenses, both civil and military. Although the last judicial hangings took place in 1964, the death penalty, in theory at least, remained for a number of crimes. During the twentieth century, 865 people were executed in Britain. This book examines each and every one of those executions, and in many cases highlights the crimes that brought these men and women to the gallows. The book also details the various forms of capital punishment used throughout British history. During past centuries people were burned at the stake, had the skin flayed from their bodies, were beheaded, garroted, hung, drawn and quartered, stoned, disemboweled, buried alive—and all under the guidance of a vengeful law, or at least what passed for law at any given period. The author, Gary M. Dobbs, has painstakingly collected together every available piece of evidence to provide as clear a picture as possible of a time when the law operated on the principle of an eye for an eye. Dobbs is a true-crime historian and has spent many hours researching the cases featured herein to bring the reader a definitive history of judicial punishment during the twentieth century, and this carefully researched, well-illustrated and enthralling text will appeal to anyone interested in the darker side of history. “A brilliant read.” —Books Monthly (UK)




How to Disappear


Book Description

It is time to reevaluate the merits of the inconspicuous life, to search out some antidote to continuous exposure, and to reconsider the value of going unseen, undetected, or overlooked in this new world. Might invisibility be regarded not simply as refuge, but as a condition with its own meaning and power? The impulse to escape notice is not about complacent isolation or senseless conformity, but about maintaining identity, autonomy, and voice. In our networked and image-saturated lives, the notion of disappearing has never been more alluring. Today, we are relentlessly encouraged, even conditioned, to reveal, share, and promote ourselves. The pressure to be public comes not just from our peers, but from vast and pervasive technology companies that want to profit from patterns in our behavior. A lifelong student and observer of the natural world, Busch sets out to explore her own uneasiness with this arrangement, and what she senses is a widespread desire for a less scrutinized way of life—for invisibility. Writing in rich painterly detail about her own life, her family, and some of the world’s most exotic and remote places, she savors the pleasures of being unseen. Discovering and dramatizing a wonderful range of ways of disappearing, from virtual reality goggles that trick the wearer into believing her body has disappeared to the way Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway finds a sense of affiliation with the world around her as she ages, Busch deliberates on subjects new and old with equal sensitivity and incisiveness. How to Disappear is a unique and exhilarating accomplishment, overturning the dangerous modern assumption that somehow fame and visibility equate to success and happiness. Busch presents a field guide to invisibility, reacquainting us with the merits of remaining inconspicuous, and finding genuine alternatives to a life of perpetual exposure. Accessing timeless truths in order to speak to our most urgent contemporary problems, she inspires us to develop a deeper appreciation for personal privacy in a vast and intrusive world.




Discipline and Punish


Book Description

A brilliant work from the most influential philosopher since Sartre. In this indispensable work, a brilliant thinker suggests that such vaunted reforms as the abolition of torture and the emergence of the modern penitentiary have merely shifted the focus of punishment from the prisoner's body to his soul.




The Trial and Execution of the Traitor George Washington


Book Description

A Finalist for the Sidewise Award for Alternate History “A clever and imaginative tale.” —Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author A thought-provoking novel that imagines what would have happened if the British had succeeded in kidnapping General George Washington. British special agent Jeremiah Black, an officer of the King’s Guard, lands on a lonely beach in the wee hours of the morning in late November 1780. The revolution is in full swing but has become deadlocked. Black is here to change all that. His mission, aided by Loyalists, is to kidnap George Washington and spirit him back to London aboard the HMS Peregrine, a British sloop of war that is waiting closely offshore. Once he lands, though, the “aid by Loyalists” proves problematic because some would prefer just to kill the general outright. Black manages—just—to get Washington aboard the Peregrine, which sails away. Upon their arrival in London, Washington is imprisoned in the Tower to await trial on charges of high treason. England’s most famous barristers seek to represent him but he insists on using an American. He chooses Abraham Hobhouse, an American-born barrister with an English wife—a man who doesn’t really need the work and thinks the “career-building” case will be easily resolved through a settlement of the revolution and Washington’s release. But as greater political and military forces swirl around them and peace seems ever more distant, Hobhouse finds that he is the only thing keeping Washington from the hangman’s noose. Drawing inspiration from a rumored kidnapping plot hatched in 1776 by a member of Washington’s own Commander-in-Chief Guard, Charles Rosenberg has written a compelling novel that envisions what would take place if the leader of America’s fledgling rebellion were taken from the nation at the height of the war, imperiling any chance of victory.




Major-General Thomas Harrison


Book Description

Thomas Harrison is today perhaps best remembered for the manner of his death. As a leading member of the republican regime and signatory to Charles I’s death warrant, he was hanged, drawn and quartered by the Restoration government in 1660; a spectacle witnessed by Samuel Pepys who recorded him ’looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition’. Beginning with this grisly event, this book employs a thematic, rather than chronological approach, to illustrate the role of millenarianism and providence in the English Revolution, religion within the new model army, literature, image and reputation, and Harrison’s relationship with key individuals like Ireton and Cromwell as well as groups, most notably the Fifth Monarchists. Divided in three parts, the study starts with an analysis of Harrison’s last year of life, the nature of his response to the political collapse of the Interregnum regimes, and his apparent acceptance of the Restoration without overt resistance. Part two considers Harrison’s years of ’power’, analysing his political activities and influence in the New Model, especially with regard to the regicide. The final part ties Harrison’s political retreat to his initial emergence from obscurity; arguing that Harrison’s relative political quietism during the later 1650s was a reflection of the development of his millenarianism. Unlike the only two previous full length studies of Harrison the present work makes use of a full range of manuscript, primary and secondary sources, including the huge range of new material that has fundamentally changed how the early modern period is now understood. Fully footnoted and referenced, this study provides the first modern academic study of Harrison, and through him illuminates the key themes of this contested period.




Hung, Drawn and Executed


Book Description

Graham Humphreys' career as a poster artist looms large over horror cinema. From designing the iconic Evil Dead poster to Nightmare on Elm Street and House of a Thousand Corpses, his work is familiar to everyone. It's easy to see why his work grabs the attention of horror fans and filmmakers alike as he continually and systematically sets the bar ever higher in his quest for sheer terror and pure entertainment. With more than 40 years experience he is one of the few contemporary illustrators using the traditional medium of gouache to paint his images. Includes previously unseen work: paintings, drawings, and color studies.