Publisher's Synopsis
`A masterfully analytical history of torture's emergence in Roman law, its insertion into the medieval law of proof, its gradual abolition after 1750, and its dreadful recrudescence in modern times. The book is an exemplary application of historical scholarship to an issue where emotions tend to run ahead of reason, and as such it is a worthy successor to another volume in the same series, Ernest Gellner's `Nations and Nationalism'.;Times Literary Supplement
