Cover; Title; Epigraph; Contents; Acknowledgements; 1 No mercy here; 2 Not everyone's cup of tea; 3 The kill floor; 4 Humane and practical; 5 The right leg; 6 Close to the fire; 7 The executioner's paradox; 8 A tremendous secret; 9 Just so many of them; 10 A button, not a switch; 11 Technology; 12 Sad celebrations; 13 Known as killers; 14 The anatomy of a kill; 15 Wolves and sheep; 16 Into cleanness leaping; 17 Remove the thought; 18 A dink for Jo-Jo; 19 We ourselves are the war; Notes; Bibliography; Copyright.
Summary
How hard is it to kill, as a hunter on a Kangaroo cull, as a worker in an abattoir, as an executioner in a prison, as a soldier at war?Ninety years after World War I, police in a Victorian country town uncover the mummified head of a Turkish soldier, a bullet-ridden souvenir brought home from Gallipoli by a returning ANZAC. The macabre discovery sets Jeff Sparrow on a quest to understand the nature of deadly violence. How do ordinary people - whether in today's wars or in 1915 - learn to take a human life? How do they live with the aftermath?These questions lead Sparrow through history and a.
