Author: Arthur Koestler
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820355356
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
Reflections on Hanging is a searing indictment of capital punishment, inspired by its author's own time in the shadow of a firing squad. During the Spanish Civil War, Arthur Koestler was held by the Franco regime as a political prisoner, and condemned to death. He was freed, but only after months of witnessing the fates of less-fortunate inmates. That experience informs every page of the book, which was first published in England in 1956, and followed in 1957 by this American edition. As Koestler ranges across the history of capital punishment in Britain (with a focus on hanging), he looks at notable cases and rulings, and portrays politicians, judges, lawyers, scholars, clergymen, doctors, police, jailers, prisoners, and others involved in the long debate over the justness and effectiveness of the death penalty. In Britain, Reflections on Hanging was part of a concerted, ultimately successful effort to abolish the death penalty. At that time, in the forty-eight United States, capital punishment was sanctioned in forty-two of them, with hanging still practiced in five. This edition includes a preface and afterword written especially for the 1957 American edition. The preface makes the book relevant to readers in the U.S.; the afterword overviews the modern-day history of abolitionist legislation in the British Parliament. Reflections on Hanging is relentless, biting, and unsparing in its details of botched and unjust executions. It is a classic work of advocacy for some of society's most defenseless members, a critique of capital punishment that is still widely cited, and an enduring work that presaged such contemporary problems as the sensationalism of crime, the wrongful condemnation of the innocent and mentally ill, the callousness of penal systems, and the use of fear to control a citizenry.
Author: Arthur Koestler
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820355348
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
Reflections on Hanging is a searing indictment of capital punishment, inspired by its author’s own time in the shadow of a firing squad. During the Spanish Civil War, Arthur Koestler was held by the Franco regime as a political prisoner, and condemned to death. He was freed, but only after months of witnessing the fates of less-fortunate inmates. That experience informs every page of the book, which was first published in England in 1956, and followed in 1957 by this American edition. As Koestler ranges across the history of capital punishment in Britain (with a focus on hanging), he looks at notable cases and rulings, and portrays politicians, judges, lawyers, scholars, clergymen, doctors, police, jailers, prisoners, and others involved in the long debate over the justness and effectiveness of the death penalty. In Britain, Reflections on Hanging was part of a concerted, ultimately successful effort to abolish the death penalty. At that time, in the forty-eight United States, capital punishment was sanctioned in forty-two of them, with hanging still practiced in five. This edition includes a preface and afterword written especially for the 1957 American edition. The preface makes the book relevant to readers in the U.S.; the afterword overviews the modern-day history of abolitionist legislation in the British Parliament. Reflections on Hanging is relentless, biting, and unsparing in its details of botched and unjust executions. It is a classic work of advocacy for some of society’s most defenseless members, a critique of capital punishment that is still widely cited, and an enduring work that presaged such contemporary problems as the sensationalism of crime, the wrongful condemnation of the innocent and mentally ill, the callousness of penal systems, and the use of fear to control a citizenry.
Author: J.F. Riordan
Publisher: Beaufort Books
ISBN: 0825308038
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 171
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Book Description
Recipient of the 2020 Shelf Unbound Notable Indie Award A collection of essays by novelist J.F. Riordan, Reflections on a Life in Exile is easy to pick up, and hard to put down. By turns deeply spiritual and gently comic, these brief meditations range from the inconveniences of modern life to the shifting nature of grief. Whether it's an unexpected revelation from a trip to the hardware store, a casual encounter with a tow-truck driver, the changing seasons, or a conversation with a store clerk grieving for a dog, J. F. Riordan captures and magnifies the passing beauty of the ordinary and the extraordinary that lingers near the surface of daily life.
Author: Martin Gardner
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Games
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
Author: Melannie Svoboda
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781627853293
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 120
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Book Description
A flower growing through a crack in the pavement... two small sparrows perched on a roof... seed catalogs in February... Our world is yearning for signs of hope, and with images like these, Melannie Svoboda helps us open our hearts to hope, even in the darkest of times. Hope, she says, is rooted in our deepest longings and desires. "Hope begins with the awareness that we are not yet fulfilled-no matter how successful we may be or how many items we have checked off our bucket list." Each chapter of this beautiful book offers powerful reflections on hope in contexts of faith, love, courage, prayer, pain, sorrow, and more. Sr. Melannie also offers short prayers, questions for personal reflection or group sharing, and even suggestions for music videos to accompany your prayer. With all the demands of our contemporary world, this enlightening book offers an opportunity to pause, rest, and renew our trust in God. Book jacket.
Author: Delia Ephron
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345437829
Category : Los Angeles (Calif.)
Languages : en
Pages : 286
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Book Description
Destined for a Christmas film release from Columbia Pictures, this heartfelt novel by the co-screenwriter of "Sleepless in Seattle" is about a woman trying to keep her life and her loose-cannon family in order. "Delia Ephron is blessed with the driest of wits, the tenderest of hearts, and an uncanny ear for the way people talk."--Armistead Maupin. The movie will star Meg Ryan and Diane Keaton.
Author: Sylvie Simmons
Publisher: Canongate Books Limited
ISBN: 9781841950846
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
In 1966, an aspiring singer-songwriter drove a battered funeral car 2,000 miles from his native Canada to Los Angeles, California, to seek his fortune in the music business. Thirty-five years later, Neil Young is still going strong, the survivor of an astonishing career which has taken in the Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Still, Nash & Young, numerous collaborations and 30-plus solo albums. Featuring new and previously unpublished interviews with close friends and musicians, Simmons' book provides startling new insights into Young's music, shedding fresh light on his family life, behind-the-scenes relationships and health problems. It also uncovers new facts about his friendship with murderer Charles Manson, and closely examines his schizophrenic '80s output and musical return to form as Godfather of Grunge in '90s.
Author: James O. Jeffers
Publisher: Trafford Publishing
ISBN: 141200389X
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 384
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Book Description
The book chronicles James Jeffers' life from about age two but it purposefully falls short of being either memoirs or autobiography. With this work he has attempted to simply record for his children, grandchildren, and others the wonderful events of his life as he experienced them. The book covers thousands of miles of travel along with living and working with peoples of differing cultures on three continents and in the Caribbean, five foreign countries, and fifteen different states spanning the nation from coast to coast to coast.
Author: Beresford K. Samuels
Publisher: Page Publishing Inc
ISBN: 1640276572
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 392
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Book Description
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Author: Joshua Clover
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1784780626
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
Award winning poet Joshua Clover theorises the riot as the form of the coming insurrection Baltimore. Ferguson. Tottenham. Clichy-sous-Bois. Oakland. Ours has become an “age of riots” as the struggle of people versus state and capital has taken to the streets. Award-winning poet and scholar Joshua Clover offers a new understanding of this present moment and its history. Rioting was the central form of protest in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and was supplanted by the strike in the early nineteenth century. It returned to prominence in the 1970s, profoundly changed along with the coordinates of race and class. From early wage demands to recent social justice campaigns pursued through occupations and blockades, Clover connects these protests to the upheavals of a sclerotic economy in a state of moral collapse. Historical events such as the global economic crisis of 1973 and the decline of organized labor, viewed from the perspective of vast social transformations, are the proper context for understanding these eruptions of discontent. As social unrest against an unsustainable order continues to grow, this valuable history will help guide future antagonists in their struggles toward a revolutionary horizon.
