On Torture

Thomas C. Hilde is a research professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy and the coeditor of The Agrarian Roots of Pragmatism.

• About the Cover PhotographIntroductionChapter 1. Torture on Trial: Prosecuting Sadists and the Obfuscation of Systemic CrimeChapter 2. Torture in the Algerian WarChapter 3. There Are No Tortures in GazaChapter 4. The Nation as Iron MaidenChapter 5. Torture, Tongues, and TreasonChapter 6. The Terrorist We Torture: The Tale of Abdul Hakim MuradChapter 7. The Torturers and Their PublicChapter 8. Are there times when we have to accept torture? / Are we really so fearful?Chapter 9. Torture's New Methods and MeaningsChapter 10. Torture as a Greater EvilChapter 11. Legitimacy, Identity, Violence, and the LawChapter 12. Torture Makes the MChapter 13. Feminism's Assumptions UpendedChapter 14. Totalitarian Lust: From Salò to Abu GhraibChapter 15. Information and the Tortured ImaginationNotes on ContributorsIndex

If you're thinking, 'Who wants to read a collection of essays about torture?' you may want to reconsider... This fascinating volume examines the nature of torture, its uses, and our perceptions of it. -- John Lewis Baltimore Magazine 2009 This book appears at an extraordinary moment. -- Bill Griffin Catholic Worker 2009 This edited collection is an excellent and illuminating addition to the literature on the torture policy of the Bush administration during its war on terror. Unflinching and unforgiving. -- Karen J. Greenberg Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2009 Unflinching and unforgiving, Hilde's volume impresses the reader not just with the depravity of the world of torture that the United States chose to enter but with the sense that the road back to human decency will be a difficult one-one framed, as Dorfman suggests, by the refusal to let fear justify that which erases our humanity. -- Karen J. Greenberg Ethics and International Affairs 2009