192 pages : 28 cm

Includes index

Introduction -- Early civilizations -- Death by the Nile -- Tyranny of the Greeks -- Martyrs of the arena -- Stoning -- Crucifixion -- Roman torture -- The first millennium -- The Vikings -- The Druids -- Slow death in China -- The Anglo-Saxons -- The bog bodies -- The end of the millennium -- Before the age of reason -- Ax and block -- Victims -- Swordsmen -- The bloody codes -- Traffic at Tyburn -- A festival of death -- Hanged, drawn and quartered -- The gibbet -- Burning -- Execution devices in Europe -- Water torture -- Amputation -- Banding -- The pillory -- Whipping -- Torture chamber -- Pressing to death -- Witch hunts in Europe -- Witch hunts in England -- The Salem sensation -- Papal inquisition -- Knights Templars -- The stifling of science -- Dungeons -- Jails -- A new world -- Poor houses -- Clapped in irons -- Asylums -- Prison reforms -- Silent and solitary confinement -- Transportation -- Hulks -- Hangmen -- Cheating the gallows -- Hanging : the drop -- Hangings behind closed doors -- Penalties for piracy -- Slavery -- Slave punishment -- Army discipline -- Navy discipline -- Forerunners of the guillotine -- The guillotine's innovators -- Guillotine in overdrive -- The 20th century -- Execution in the 21st century -- Last days of the guillotine -- Electric chair -- Gas chamber -- Lethal injection -- Firing squad -- Hanging and the judicial system -- Death row, USA -- A view from death row -- Death row, Asia -- Drug offenders and their fate -- State-sponsored torture -- Chain gangs -- Bloody money -- Prison conditions -- Crimes against the state -- Lynchings -- Concentration camps -- War crimes of the First World War -- Gulags -- War crimes of the Second World War -- War crimes in Asia -- Justice at Nuremberg -- Ethnic cleansing -- Conclusion -- Glossary

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