Reveals a dark chapter in the Italian government’s colonial history that has been largely hidden from view.
 
Between the end of the nineteenth century and over the first half of the twentieth, Italy invaded and occupied the Horn of Africa, Libya, and several other territories. Yet recognition of this history of colonial destruction, racist violence, and genocidal aerial and chemical warfare—carried out not only during the Fascist dictatorship but also under preceding liberal governments—has been consistently repressed beneath the myth that the Italians never truly practiced colonialism.
 
The late journalist, historian, novelist, campaigner, and former Resistance fighter Angelo Del Boca dismantles this myth. He expertly narrates episodes of state violence committed by Italians both abroad—from Ethiopia to Slovenia, from China to Libya—and “at home” during the civil war following Unification in the 1860s or when the anti-Fascist Resistance faced off against the Republic of Salò after 1943. Attentive to the losses and pain suffered by all sides in war, Del Boca deftly demonstrates how such violence was not only a tool of domination but has also been central to creating and shaping an Italian “people.”
 
Drawing on a lifetime of interviews as a special correspondent, decades of work in private and state archives, and his own experiences during the Second World War, Del Boca’s popular and influential work has contributed to overturning views of Italian history. Presenting many historical episodes in English for the first time, As Cruel as Anyone Else provides a key to reading contemporary Italy, its place in international politics, and the disturbing permanence of the far-right within mainstream Italian politics.
 

From the excesses of Puritan patriarchs to the barbarism of slavery and on into the prison-industrial complex, punishment in the US has a long and gruesome history.

In the post-Vietnam era, the prison population has increased tenfold and the death penalty has enjoyed a renaissance. Few subjects in contemporary US society provoke as much controversy as punishment. In this context, Cruel and Unusual aims to offer the first comprehensive exploration of the history of punishment as it has been mediated in American culture.

Grounding his analysis in Marxist theory, psychoanalysis and Foucault’s influential work on discipline, Brian Jarvis examines a range of cultural texts, from seventeenth century execution sermons to twenty-first century prison films, to uncover the politics, economics and erotics of punishment.

This wide-ranging and interdisciplinary survey constructs a genealogy of cruelty through close reading of novels by Hawthorne and Melville, fictional accounts of the Rosenberg execution by Coover and Doctorow, slave narratives and prison writings by African Americans and the critically neglected genre of American prison films.

In the process, Cruel and Unusual unmasks a fundamental conflict between legends of liberty in the Land of the Free and the secret, silenced histories of sadomasochistic desire, punishment for profit and social control.

"These essays...show us the human and inhuman realities of capital punishment through the eyes of the condemned and those who work with them. By focusing on those awaiting death, they present the awful truth behind the statistics in concrete, personal terms." --William J. Bowers, author of Legal Homicide Between 1930 and 1967, there were 3,859 executions carried out under state and civil authority in the United States. Since the ten-year moratorium on capital punishment ended in 1977, more than one hundred prisoners have been executed. There are more than two thousand men and women now living on death row awaiting their executions. Facing the Death Penalty offers an in-depth examination of what life under a sentence of death is like for condemned inmates and their families, how and why various professionals assist them in their struggle for life, and what these personal experiences with capital punishment tell us about the wisdom of this penal policy. The contributors include historians, attorneys, sociologists, anthropologists, criminologists, a minister, a philosopher, and three prisoners. One of the prisoner-contributors is Willie Jasper Darden, Jr., whose case and recent execution after fourteen years on death row drew international attention. The inter-disciplinary perspectives offered in this book will not solve the death penalty debate, but they offer important and unique insights on the full effects of American capital punishment provisions. While the book does not set out to generate sympathy for those convicted of horrible crimes, taken together, the essays build a case for abolition of the death penalty. "This work stands with the best of what's been written. It represents the best of those who have seen the worst." --Colman McCarthy, The Washington Post Book World