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| Malleus
Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger by Henricus Institoris, Montague Summers, Heinrich Institoris (Dover Pbns) Recommended by Charles Ballou: "... a medieval text book put out by the pope (Innocent VIII). It defines, explains and teaches how to catch, prosecute, convict, and execute witches. A how to manual for inquisitions. It is chock full of anecdotes. Check it out." (Not Yet Reviewed) |
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| Without
Sanctuary: Lynching Photography In America By Geoffrey Abbott Headline Book Pub Ltd "Without Sanctuary" is an amazing, but very upsetting, collection of lynching photographs and some of the stories that go with them. Although the images of the beaten, burned, mutilated, and hung victims are horrible enough on their own, the thing that truly disturbs me about these photographs are the spectators - men, women, and children - smiling, goofing off, and proudly posing in front of the corpses, just as if they were at a Fourth of July picnic or something. It's really frightening to think how cruel and vicious "good god-fearing citizens" behaved not so very long ago (the majority of the pictures date from the 1890's-1930's, though the most recent comes from 1960). I think this book is performing a great service by refusing to allow this country to forget its own barbarities of the not-so-distant past. Also recommended by Einstein Shrugged: "I picked up a copy of this one night in a fit of drunken Amazon shopping so when it turned up it was a bit of a surprise but morbid surprises are always the best kind. There's not much in the way of text (though what they have is pretty intense) and it mostly lets the photography speak for itself. I've had it for a little over a week and have already read and looked through it twice. The lynchings are bad enough, but the crowd shots of happy, smiling people make it one of the most disturbing books I've read in a long time." NNNNN - Upsetting But Essential! |
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| Slave
Narratives by Federal Writers' Project (Ancestry Publishing) Recommended by Triop786: "I've never been able to get a copy of it because the book has been out of print since the 1930s. Short history: as part of his New Deal programs, FDR commissioned out of-work writers to record the tales of former slaves, of their lives and experiences as slaves. Like I said, I've never gotten a copy of it so I can't vouch for it's complete morbidity, but when I think about it-how could it not be morbid with the way they must have treated? Two detractors. The book is 10,000 pages long, seriously, and way out of my price range. " Luckily, it looks like Ancestry Publishing has re-released 2000+ of the slave narratives on the above-linked CD-Rom, which is a much more affordable option than the extremely pricy reissues of the original FWP books (which run between $75-100 a volume - and there are over twenty volumes! |
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