{"product_id":"torture-and-democracy-9780691143330","title":"Torture and Democracy","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTakes the reader from the late nineteenth century to the aftermath of Abu Ghraib, from slavery and the electric chair to electrotorture in American inner cities, and from French and British colonial prison cells and the Spanish-American War to the fields of Vietnam, the wars of the Middle East, and the democracies of Latin America and Europe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWinner of the 2009 Lemkin Award, Institute for the Study of Genocide Winner of the 2008 Best Book, Human Rights Section of the American Political Science Association \"Rejali's approach is to track the different behaviors, trends and traditions in torture throughout history to see who influenced whom and what they did...Rejali, a leading expert on government interrogation techniques, reaches key conclusions. First, monitoring by human rights groups doesn't stop torture, it simply causes torturers to resort to techniques that don't scar...Second, most contemporary torture traditions were passed on like crafts from teacher to apprentice...Third, Rejali writes, a person being tortured is likely to say whatever he thinks his captors want to hear, making it one of the poorest methods of gathering reliable information.\"--Laurel Maury, Los Angeles Times \"Torture and Democracy immediately lays claim to be the most compendious and the most rigorous treatment of the subject yet written. Saul Bellow used to say that we are constantly looking for the book it is necessary to read next. On torture, this is it...Torture and Democracy is the anatomy of sneaky. Rejali regales us with tales of every technique of torture known to man...Rejali's analysis of efficacy is exemplary: at once prudent and trenchant, historically alert and morally sentient.\"--Alex Danchev, Times Higher Education \"[A] magisterial study of torture and how it has developed as a social and moral issue with a focus on developments through the last century.\"--Scott Horton, Harper's Magazine \"An exhaustive study of...'clean tortures,' or tortures that leave no permanent scars. Electrotorture, water tortures, stress and duress positions, beating, noise, drugs and forced exercises all make an appearance. The book is a towering achievement, a serious work of social science on an urgent topic that is too frequently surrounded by assumption and myth. It should be read and disseminated widely...The book is devoted to exploding one myth in particular: that clean tortures can casually and reliably be traced to the ancients, or, failing that, to the Nazis. Rejali's provocative thesis is that most clean tortures were actually born in democracies, especially imperial Britain and France.\"--Michael O'Donnell, San Francisco Chronicle \"Torture and Democracy is a much-needed attempt to put our discussions on a firmer historical and conceptual footing while showing us the realities of what torture is and what it does. Based on a decade of research and approximately 2,000 sources in 14 languages, Torture and Democracy is really several books in one. It is a methodical history of what Rejali calls 'clean' or 'stealth' torture (torture that leaves no marks) in the 20th century; a sociological examination of torture's relationship to democracies; a psychological exploration of torture's impact on societies and individuals; a practical consideration of torture's effectiveness; a philosophical musing on the ethics of torture and interrogation in general; an exhaustive cataloguing of tortures used throughout the ages; and what Rejali calls 'a reliable sourcebook' for those who speak out against torture anywhere.\"--Michael McGregor, The Oregonian \"[Creates] what essentially amounts to an epidemiology of torture. Just as scientists were able to show how HIV traveled around the world by mapping the locatino and date of each outbreak of AIDS, Rejali similarly documents the global transmission of major torture techniquest by drawing up a chronology of their occurrence ... Rejali's accomplishment--and it's a considerable one--is to lay out this vast amount of information to demonstrate patterns few had noticed before.\"--Brian Zabcik, American Lawyer \"Documenting modern torture techniques, [Torture and Democracy] is both horrifying and compelling. The consequences of torture are always unpredictable and Rejali argues that torture fails when it's needed most--in last-minute, ticking bomb scenarios.\"--Karen J. Greenberg, Financial Times \"Dozens of books about torture have been published over the last five years. But none compare to Torture and Democracy for its richly detailed comparative analysis, and its synthesis of historical, psychological, medical, forensic, sociological, and political information to explain what torture is, what it does to victims and perpetrators, and why and how it spreads... Rejali has earned the right to speak authoritatively about the most important question of all: Does torture work? His answer, like his book, is profound, complex, and supported by a wealth of empirical detail.\"--Lisa Hajjar, Arab Studies Journal \"Torture and Democracy, the fruit of a lifetime's study should dispel much ignorance and frequently facile assumptions about the subject.\"--David Bentley, World Today \"Darius Rejali's Torture and Democracy, a decade in the making, will be the canonical source text for information on, and the historical confirmation of, the democratic pedigree of tortures that leave no mark.\"--Aziz Z. Huq. World Policy Journal \"Sprawling, essential... A massive dictionary of the unspeakable.\"--Gary Bass, Dissent \"Rejali's consolidation of the available data on torture is certainly an admirable and relevant task. What is especially provocative and essential about Rejali's scholarship is that he forces readers to retreat from the minutiae of political debates surrounding torture and asks us to examine the larger contextual picture.\"--Shana Tabak, Democracy \u0026amp; Society \"This book is quite simply the most authoritative study of torture ever written. Twenty-five years of painstaking research in the making, it will serve the human rights movement for decades to come.\"--George Hunsinger, Theology Today \"The book suits well as an introduction to the topic of torture (techniques) throughout the world from the 20th century until today... [T]he first two parts of the opus offer a vast amount of information on the historical and technical development of torture across many different states.\"--Daniela Kaschel, Journal of International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict \"Torture and Democracy by Darius Rejali is arguably the most impressive and most important book to be published on torture in the past few years. A monumental achievement of meticulous documentation, theoretical testing, and reasoned argumentation, it is certain to become the yardstick against which future research on torture will be measured... It should be required reading for any scholar or student of torture, and more importantly, for every policy-maker and counter-terrorism practitioner considering whether torture could or should be used to deal with the current terrorist threat.\"--Richard Jackson, Critical Studies on Terrorism \"A brave and disturbing book, this is the benchmark against which all future studies of modern torture will be measured.\"--World Book Industry\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePreface xv  Acknowledgments xix      Introduction 1  Historical Claims 3  Puzzles and Cautions 5  The Priority of Public Monitoring 8  Variations among States 11  Variations within States 15  National Styles of Stealth Torture 16  Torture and Democracy 21  Does Torture Work? 23  Who Cares? 25      Part I: Torture and Democracy 33      Chapter 1: Modern Torture and Its Observers 35  Defining Torture 36  Monitoring Torture 39      Chapter 2: Torture and Democracy 45  The National Security Model 46  The Juridical Model 49  The Civic Discipline Model 55  Hell Is in the Details 60      Part II: Remembering Stalinism and Nazism 65  Introduction 67      Chapter 3: Lights, Heat, and Sweat 69  Sweating and Stealth in America 70  British Psychological Techniques 74  Interrogation Elsewhere in Europe 76  Sweating and Stealth in Russia 79  The Spread of the Russian Style 83  Remembering Pavlov 87      Chapter 4: Whips and Water 91  Labussie're's List 92  Documenting Nazi Torture 93  Torture in Germany 95  Torture in Nazi-Occupied Europe 97  Remembering the War 104      Chapter 5: Bathtubs 108  Masuy's Bathtub 109  Marty's Magneto 111  The French Gestapo and Electric Torture 112  The Decline of Sweating and Stealth 115  The German Gestapo and Modern Torture 117  Remembering Nuremberg 117  The Search for Electric Torture 118      Part III: A History of Electric Stealth 121      Chapter 6: Shock 123  The AC\/DC Controversy and the Electric Chair 124  The Mystery of Electric Death 126  Early Police Devices 128  The Mystery of Shock 132  Early Medical Devices 135  Transmitting Shock 138  Later Medical Devices 139  Remembering the Animals 141      Chapter 7: Magnetos 144  What Is a Magneto? 145  Indochina, 1931 146  Out of Indochina 149  Korea, 1931 150  Out of Korea 152  The Lost History of the Magneto 155  French and British Electrotorture after World War II 157  The Colonial Police and Wuillaume's List 160  The Triumph of the Ge'ge'ne 161  Algeria, 1960 163  Remembering the Gestapo 165      Chapter 8: Currents 167  South Vietnamese Torture 170  Vietnam, 1968 172  Bell Telephone Hour 174  Out of Vietnam Again 178  Variation within the French Style 183  Cattle Prods 185  The Electric Cornucopia 186  Remembering Vietnam 188      Chapter 9: Singing the World Electric 190  When Electrotorture Was New 190  Explaining Clean Electrotorture 194  Crafting Electrotorture 197  Surging Forward 201  The Americas 203  Middle East and North Africa 207  Asia 209  Sub-Saharan Africa 211  Europe and Central Asia 214  Explaining the Surge 216  Remembering the Cold War 222      Chapter 10: Prods, Tasers, and Stun Guns 225  Electric Utopia 225  Electric-Free Protest 227  Stun Technology 229  Covering America 230  Remembering Eutopia 237      Chapter 11: Stun City 239  Magneto Torture in Chicago 240  Stun and Torture 242  Tasers and Torture 245  Burning Issues 248  Stun and Democracy 249  But No One Died 252  Civic Shock 253  Welcome to Stun City 255      Part IV: Other Stealth Traditions 259  Introduction 261      Chapter 12: Sticks and Bones 269  Clean Whipping 269  Paddles 271  Beating Feet 273  Remembering Slaves and Sailors 277      Chapter 13: Water, Sleep, and Spice 279  Pumping 280  Choking 281  Showers and Ice 285  Salt and Spice 287  Deprivation of Sleep 290  Remembering the Inquisition 292      Chapter 14: Stress and Duress 294  Great and Lesser Stress Traditions 295  British Stress Tortures 296  French Stress Tortures 301  American Stress Tortures 306  Authoritarian Adaptations 311  Remembering the Eighteenth Century 314      Chapter 15: Forced Standing and Other Positions 316  Old Users after the War 317  Positional Tortures in the Communist World 322  Positional Tortures in the Non-Communist World 324  The Universal Distributor Hypothesis Revisited 329  Remembering the Hooded Men 332      Chapter 16: Fists and Exercises 334  Clean Beating 335  Adapting \"the Necktie\" 341  Exhaustion Exercises 342  Remembering the Grunts and the Cops 345      Chapter 17: Old and New Restraints 347  Bucking (the Parrot's Perch) 347  The Crapaudine 349  Standing Handcuffs 350  Sweatboxes 351  Adapting Old Restraints 353  The Shabeh 354  Remembering the Allied POWs 357      Chapter 18: Noise 360  Low-Technology Noise 360  High-Technology Noise 363  The CIA and Sensory Deprivation Boxes 368  Beyond the Laboratory 371  Principles and Guinea Pigs 373  Remembering Evil 384      Chapter 19: Drugs and Doctors 385  Police and Drugs 386  The CIA and Drugs 388  The Decline of Pharmacological Torture 390  Soviet Pharmacological Torture 392  Communist Pyschoprisons 394  Lines of Defense 397  Remembering the Prison Doctors 401  V Politics and Memory 403      Chapter 20: Supply and Demand for Clean Torture 405  Historical Claims 406  The Priority of Public Monitoring 409  Variations among and within States 414  National Styles of Stealth Torture 419  The Strength of Low Technology 423  The Power of Whispers 426  Why Styles Change 434  Disciplinary Interventions 439  The Demand for Torture 444      Chapter 21: Does Torture Work? 446  Can Torture Be Scientific? 447  Can Torture Be Restrained? 450  Does Technology Help? 453  Can Torture Be Professionally Conducted? 454  Works Better Than What? 458  Is Anything Better Than Nothing? 460  How Well Do Interrogators Spot the Truth? 463  How Well Do Cooperative Prisoners Remember? 466  How Good Is the Intelligence Overall? 469  Even When Time Is Short? 474  Remembering the Questions 478      Chapter 22: What the Apologists Say 480  Remembering the Battle of Algiers 481  Information in the Battle of Algiers 482  French Interrogation Units 485  Coerced Information in the Algerian War 487  Saving Innocents, Losing Wars 492  Gestapo Stories 493  Stories from the Resistance 495  CIA Stories 500  The Interrogation of Al Qaeda 503  Abu Ghraib and Guanta'namo 508  Afghanistan 511  Testimonial Literature from Other Conflicts 513  Remembering Abu Ghraib 518      Chapter 23: Why Governments Don't Learn 519  How Knowledge Does Not Accumulate 520  How Knowledge Is Not Analyzed 521  How Torture Warrants Might Help 523  Regulating Torture 526  Variations in Regulative Failure 529  Stealth and the Regulation of Torture 532  How Knowledge Does Not Matter 533  Remembering the Soldiers 535      Chapter 24: The Great Age of Torture in Modern Memory 537  The Great Rift 538  The Architecture of Amnesia 540  The Designs of Genius 542  Demons in the City 543  Algerian Souvenirs 545  Caring for the Memories 550      Appendixes  A: A List of Clean Tortures 553  B: Issues of Method 557  C: Organization and Explanations 566  D: A Note on Sources for American Torture during the Vietnam War 581      Notes 593  Selected Bibliography 781  Index 819","brand":"Princeton University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48865522614615,"sku":"9780691143330","price":43.2,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780691143330.jpg?v=1722274374","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/torture-and-democracy-9780691143330","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}