Fierce, searing, and darkly comical, Garriga's debut collection of short-short fiction depicts historical and imagined duels, re-envisioning in a flash the competing points of motivation—courage and cowardice, honor and vengeance—that lead individuals to risk it all. In this compact collection, “settling the score” provides a fascinating apparatus for exploring foundational civilizing ideas. Notions of courage, cowardice, and revenge course through Michael Garriga’s flash fiction pieces, each one of which captures a duel’s decisive moment from three distinct perspectives: opposing accounts from the individual duelists, followed by the third account of a witness. In razor-honed language, the voices of the duelists take center stage, training a spotlight on the litany of misguided beliefs and perceptions that lead individuals into such conflicts. From Cain and Abel to Andrew Jackson and Charles Dickenson; from John Henry and the steam drill to an alcoholic fighting the bottle: the cumulative effect of these powerful pieces is a probing and disconcerting look at humankind’s long-held notions of pride, honor, vengeance, and satisfaction. Meticulously crafted by Garriga, and with stunning illustrations by Tynan Kerr, The Book of Duels is a unique and remarkable debut.

A duel could result from any challenge to a gentleman's honour, from minor insult to major accusation. At a prearranged time, two men at odds would meet, armed either with swords or pistols, to engage in a formal and sometimes fatal exchange. Gentlemen considered it their prerogative to fight, despite the illegality of duelling, and figures as prominent as the Duke of Wellington and Georges Clemenceau defended their honour in this way. Why did participants flout the law, what codes were followed, what were the changing roles of the seconds, and what were the consequences for victims and victors? Stephen Banks answers these questions and examines the evolution from Norman trials-by-combat to the formalised duel, analysing the custom's decline in England by Victorian times and its final disppearance from Europe by the twentieth century.

Many of the West’s best writers fought in duels or wrote about them, seduced by glamour or risk or recklessness. A gift as a plot device, the duel also offered a way to discover how we face fears of humiliation, pain, and death. John Leigh’s literary history of the duel illuminates these and other tensions attending the birth of the modern world.

This 1829 manual offered advice on everything from withdrawal of challenges to weapons. Dramatic anecdotes recount duels arising from disagreements over religion, women, gambling, and other volatile subjects.

This history of the social custom of pistol dueling in the antebellum South documents the rules for its conduct, its causes, and its typical participants. Also included is a popular dueling code from the year 1838 by John Lyde Wilson, one-time governer of South Carolina.--From publisher description.

The question of what it takes "to be a man" comes under scrutiny in this sharp, often playful, cultural critique of the German duel--the deadliest type of one-on-one combat in fin-de-siécle Europe. At a time when dueling was generally restricted to swords or had been abolished altogether in other nations, the custom of fighting to the death with pistols flourished among Germany's upper-class males, who took perverse comfort in defying their country's weakly enforced laws. From initial provocation to final death agony, Kevin McAleer describes with ironic humor the complex protocol of the German duel, inviting his reader into the disturbing mindset of its practitioners and the society that valued this socially important but ultimately absurd pastime. Through a narrative that cannot restrain itself from poking fun at the egos and prejudices that come to the fore in the pursuit of "manliness," McAleer offers both an entertaining and thought-provoking portrait of a cultural phenomenon that had far-reaching effects. The author employs a wealth of anecdotes to re-create the dueling event in all its variety, from the level of insult--which could range from loudly ridiculing a man's choice of entrée in an upscale restaurant to, more commonly, bedding his wife--to such intricacies as the time and place of the duel, the guest list, the selection of weapons and number of paces, dress options, and the decision regarding when to let the attending physician set up his instruments on the field. As he exposes the reader to the fierce mentality behind these proceedings, McAleer describes the duel as a litmus test of courage, the masculine apotheosis, which led its male practitioners to lay claim to both psychic and legal entitlements in Wilhelmine society. The aristocratic nature of the duel, with its feudal ethos of chivalry, gave its upper-middle-class practitioners even more opportunity to distinguish themselves from the underclasses and other marginalized groups--such as Socialists, Jews, left-liberals, Catholics, and pacifists, who, for various reasons, were stigmatized as incapable of "giving satisfaction." The duel, according to McAleer, was thus a social mirror, and the dueling issue political dynamite. Throughout these accounts, the author sustains a personal voice to convey the horror and fascination of what at first appears to be simply a curious fringe activity, but which he goes on to reveal as an integral element of German society's consciousness in the late nineteenth century. In so doing, he strengthens the argument that Germany followed a path of development separate from the rest of Europe, leading to World War I and ultimately to Hitler and the Nazis. Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

"Never, never, did I imagine that dueling could be so enthralling, outrageous, gruesome, tragic, and, yes, ridiculous...Lively humor and sparkling prose." -Wall Street Journal The medieval justice of trial by combat evolved into the private duel by sword and pistol, with thousands of honorable men-and not-so-honorable women-giving lives and limbs to wipe out an insult or prove a point. The duel was essential to private, public, and political life, and those who followed the elaborate codes of procedure were seldom prosecuted and rarely convicted-for, in fact, they were obeying a grand old tradition. Based on her fascinating 1997 Smithsonian article, Barbara Holland's Gentlemen's Blood is the first trade book to trace the remarkable, often gruesome, sometimes comical history of the Western tradition of defending one's honor.

Arguments about the place and practice of the duel in early modern England were widespread. The distinguished intellectual historian Markku Peltonen examines this debate, and show how the moral and ideological status of duelling was discussed within a much larger cultural context of courtesy, civility and politeness. The advocates of the duel, following Italian and French examples, contended that it maintained and enhanced politeness; its critics by contrast increasingly severed duelling from civility, and this separation became part of a vigorous attempt in the late seventeenth century and beyond to redefine civility, politeness and indeed the nature and evolution of Englishness. To understand the duel is to understand much more fully some crucial issues in the cultural and ideological history of Stuart England, and Markku Peltonen's study will thus engage the attention of a very wide audience of historians and cultural and literary scholars.

A duel could result from any challenge to a gentleman's honour, from minor insult to major accusation. At a prearranged time, two men at odds would meet, armed either with swords or pistols, to engage in a formal and sometimes fatal exchange. Gentlemen considered it their prerogative to fight, despite the illegality of duelling, and figures as prominent as the Duke of Wellington and Georges Clemenceau defended their honour in this way. Why did participants flout the law, what codes were followed, what were the changing roles of the seconds, and what were the consequences for victims and victors? Stephen Banks answers these questions and examines the evolution from Norman trials-by-combat to the formalised duel, analysing the custom's decline in England by Victorian times and its final disppearance from Europe by the twentieth century.

After the gross and unjustifiable insults you have offered me both as a soldier and a gentleman, I conclude you must be prepared to give me that satisfaction I am entitled to. I am therefore to request that you will name a place and hour of meeting.' So runs a typical challenge to a duel from the early 19th century; formal, polite - and potentially fatal. Duelling is deeply imbedded in our collective consciousness, through numerous films and novels; it evokes a golden past, of gentlemen defending their honour (or that of their wives) in the early morning light of a wooded glade; of frockcoats, rapiers and pistols. From the duel's roots in medieval chivalric tournaments, to the unforgiving code of honour in which death was preferable to shame, this fascinating history recounts - with the aid of numerous vivid eye-witness accounts - all the drama and sheer terror of the duel.