- Publisher: Bloomsbury
- Year: 2024
- Format: Hardback
- Pages: 318pp
- Illustrated: Yes
- Dimensions: 240x160mm
- Condition: New
- Weight: 0.5kg
- ISBN: 9781399413893
- Product code: 546789
Letters for the Ages: Behind Bars
New Hardback Illustrated
Postscript summary
Throughout history, society has incarcerated those it sees, justly or unjustly, as problematic. This collection of letters written behind bars includes the testimony of criminals including Billy the Kid, Al Capone and Charles Bronson; political prisoners such as Sylvia Pankhurst, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Ai Weiwei; and the last words of those about to be executed, among them Mary Queen of Scots, Walter Raleigh and Marie Antoinette.
Product information
Full publisher description
Letters for the Ages Behind Bars is a history of imprisonment told through the letters of people incarcerated over many centuries, for crimes committed or sometimes even for no reason at all. It is a story that runs from St Paul right up to the present day.
The act of depriving someone of their liberty is one of humankind's most enduring responses to 'crime' through history. What society has sought to achieve over the years by doing so has shifted across the centuries and there is now a variety of purposes: to express disapproval; for the purpose of straight-up punishment through the removal of freedom; to protect the general public; to rehabilitate, perhaps even to forget about those with whom we simply cannot cope.
The letters assembled here come from all parts of the world, and from time immemorial: Thomas Cromwell, Mary Queen of Scots, Eamon De Valera, Al Capone, Martin Luther King and many more.
These letters not only reveal what it is like to be behind bars, but raise issues that are still of pressing interest for us today - such as the death penalty, miscarriages of justice, redemption and social change. They shed light on a system which is primarily one of contradictions - there are letters which inspire, horrify, letters which awe and condemn - even letters which make you laugh or cry.
The act of depriving someone of their liberty is one of humankind's most enduring responses to 'crime' through history. What society has sought to achieve over the years by doing so has shifted across the centuries and there is now a variety of purposes: to express disapproval; for the purpose of straight-up punishment through the removal of freedom; to protect the general public; to rehabilitate, perhaps even to forget about those with whom we simply cannot cope.
The letters assembled here come from all parts of the world, and from time immemorial: Thomas Cromwell, Mary Queen of Scots, Eamon De Valera, Al Capone, Martin Luther King and many more.
These letters not only reveal what it is like to be behind bars, but raise issues that are still of pressing interest for us today - such as the death penalty, miscarriages of justice, redemption and social change. They shed light on a system which is primarily one of contradictions - there are letters which inspire, horrify, letters which awe and condemn - even letters which make you laugh or cry.
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546789
Letters for the Ages: Behind Bars
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Throughout history, society has incarcerated those it sees, justly or unjustly, as problematic. This collection of letters written behind bars includes the testimony of criminals including Billy the Kid, Al Capone and Charles Bronson; political prisoners such as Sylvia Pankhurst, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Ai Weiwei; and the last words of those about to be executed, among them Mary Queen of Scots, Walter Raleigh and Marie Antoinette.
Hardback
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rrp_info:£20.00
productId:187265
bic_code:BJ, DQ, HBTB, JKVP
BJ, DQ, HBTB, JKVP
£20.00
Ed. James Drake, Edward Smyth, Fore. Jonathan Aitken
General
240x160mm
Bloomsbury
No
Hardback
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Social & Cultural
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