Handbook on Hanging : All very proper to be kept and read in every family

Being a short introduction to the fine art of execution, containing much useful information on neck-breaking, throttling, strangling, asphyxiation, decapitation and electrocution; data and wrinkles on hangmanship; with the late Mr. Hangman Berry's method and his pioneering list of drops; to which is added an account of the great Nuremberg hangings; a ready reckoner for hangmen; and many other items of interest including the anatomy of murder. Finally definitive edition diligently compared and revised in accordance with the most recent developments in the art. First published in 1928.

A Handbook on Hanging is a Swiftian tribute to that unappreciated mainstay of civilization: the hangman. With barbed insouciance, Charles Duff writes not only of hanging but of electrocution, decapitations, and gassings; of innocent men executed and of executions botched; of the bloodlust of mobs and the shabby excuses of the great. This coruscating and, in contemporary America, very relevant polemic makes clear that whatever else capital punishment may be said to be--justice, vengeance, a deterrent--it is certainly killing.