W. Fitzhugh Brundage is William B. Umstead Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship for his present work on torture in American history. Brundage has written extensively on racial inequality and violence, from segregation to lynching.
“A morally engaging investigation of torture that measures American
ideals of democracy and equality against a dark, uncomfortable
reality.”—Pulitzer Prize Board
“A sobering history of how American communities and institutions
have relied on torture in various forms since before the United
States was founded. From indigenous American cultures’ use of
ritualized torture to the techniques imported from Europe by early
European settlers, to the various acts of cruelty and violence
employed by prison guards, slave owners, the police and American
soldiers, Brundage makes the…case that torture is a fundamental
part of America’s history and makeup…The work of American torture
has always been twofold: not just the violence itself, but the
complex legal and rhetorical strategies that obfuscate it away to
maintain a myth of America as a civilized place without cruel and
unusual punishment.”—Los Angeles Times
“Understanding the history of torture in the United States will not
prevent future violence, but Brundage views this information as
providing an important framework for an engaged citizenry… Given
that the current occupant of the White House has insisted that
torture ‘absolutely’ works and has boasted he ‘would bring back a
hell of a lot worse than waterboarding,’ the lessons of Civilizing
Torture feel positively urgent.”—Australian Book Review
“Torture is a topic that many Americans might assume is a rarity in
the country’s history, since it’s now banned by international law.
But as the title of this book suggests, the reality is just the
opposite…Essential reading for a better understanding of social and
political justice.”—Library Journal (starred review)
“While the American people take pride in their country as
democratic and civilized, history has shown that the practice of
torture and violence pervades much of its history…This book is
important to the historical record and is an invaluable tool for
historians and social scientists.”—Choice
“A remarkable account of America’s episodic engagement with torture
over the course of the nation’s history. Brundage uncovers ‘an
American tradition’ marked less by legal and moral restraint than
by strategies of rhetorical management designed to conserve
American innocence and exceptionalism. A searing analysis of
America’s past that helps make sense of its bewildering
present.”—David Garland, author of Peculiar Institution: America’s
Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition
“An indispensable book. Even as Americans have prided themselves on
a civilized standard that is above torture, the United States has
actually been engaged in the practice for virtually its entire
history. Brundage shows that many of U.S. history’s key moments
have involved torture of the most despicable kinds. Here’s hoping
that Brundage’s book is the beginning of a new reckoning.”—John
Fabian Witt, author of Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American
History
“American claims to constitute a higher form of ‘civilization’
erode in the face of this sobering study of atrocity. With
extraordinarily deep and wide-ranging research, Fitzhugh Brundage
shows that the American state has repeatedly resorted to savage
violence against marginalized groups such as Indians, slaves, and
prisoners. Bringing a humane sensibility to an inhumane subject,
Brundage forces us to confront our painful past.”—Barbara J. Keys,
author of Reclaiming American Virtue: The Human Rights Revolution
of the 1970s
“That Americans as a people and a nation-state are violent is
indisputable. That we are also torturers, domestically and
internationally, is not so well established. The myth that we are
not torturers will persist, but Civilizing Torture will remain a
powerful antidote in confronting it.”—Lawrence Wilkerson,
Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Government and Public Policy,
The College of William and Mary, and former Chief of Staff to
Secretary of State Colin Powell, 2002–2005
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