Handbook on Hanging

<i>A Handbook on Hanging</i> 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.