Between The Guillotine & Liberty: Two Centuries Of The Crime Problem In France
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Condition: Paperback - good/fair, cover may be worn. May have inscription on fep.
From the shadow of the guillotine to the corridors of modern justice, Gordon Wright's Between the Guillotine & Liberty charts a sweeping, deeply researched history of crime and punishment in France across two turbulent centuries. The book chronicles the evolution of French criminal justice from the Revolutionary era through the twentieth century, examining how a nation simultaneously shaped by Enlightenment ideals and brutal repression struggled to reconcile liberty with social order. Wright presents a riveting cast of infamous criminals, moral panics, and landmark legal reforms that collectively shaped the French penal system into its modern form. Wright's magisterial command of historical narrative brings together social history, criminology, and political philosophy in a work that is as analytically rigorous as it is compulsively readable. He argues that France's approach to crime has always been a mirror of its deeper ideological tensions — between tradition and revolution, vengeance and rehabilitation, the state and the individual. Culminating in the abolition of the guillotine in 1981, this is a book that challenges readers to ask whether any society has truly resolved the conflict between punishment and justice.
Author: Gordon Wright
Format: Paperback
Genre: European history
Condition remarks:
Condition: Paperback - good/fair, cover may be worn. May have inscription on fep.
From the shadow of the guillotine to the corridors of modern justice, Gordon Wright's Between the Guillotine & Liberty charts a sweeping, deeply researched history of crime and punishment in France across two turbulent centuries. The book chronicles the evolution of French criminal justice from the Revolutionary era through the twentieth century, examining how a nation simultaneously shaped by Enlightenment ideals and brutal repression struggled to reconcile liberty with social order. Wright presents a riveting cast of infamous criminals, moral panics, and landmark legal reforms that collectively shaped the French penal system into its modern form. Wright's magisterial command of historical narrative brings together social history, criminology, and political philosophy in a work that is as analytically rigorous as it is compulsively readable. He argues that France's approach to crime has always been a mirror of its deeper ideological tensions — between tradition and revolution, vengeance and rehabilitation, the state and the individual. Culminating in the abolition of the guillotine in 1981, this is a book that challenges readers to ask whether any society has truly resolved the conflict between punishment and justice.