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cindie's review against another edition
4.0
The Thirteenth Turn: A History of the Noose pulls no punches, much like its title. You know what you’re going to get, you’re just not entirely sure how the information will be presented to you.
Shuler is borderline conversational: think Mary Roach as she talked about the digestive system in her book Gulp. He’s addressing heavy topics, such as the youngest known victim of the noose, 12 year-old Hannah Occuish, and the rash of lynchings in during Reconstruction. He doesn’t need to dramatize these horrific events, just to provide the facts and to try to provide the right historical context. A chapter on the importance of the knot itself (Knot #1119 in the Ashley Book of Knots), and an early chapter on the Tollund Man, a “bog body” that was found buried with a noose and believed to have been killed for sacrificial purposes, bring more…levity to counter balance the serious chapters.
Sitting on the subway with my Kindle, I felt self-conscious while reading The Thirteenth Turn. What if someone looked over and read a sentence about a particularly brutal lunch mob, or the KKK? Not to mention the images that popped up occasionally, such as of the lynch mob and their victims Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Mason, Indiana (warning: images are reproduced at that link). What would the people near me (and being on the NYC subway, they are of all colors and creeds) think of my book of choice? I felt uncomfortable, which is how I should have felt.
And then I realized “crap, this shouldn’t be about me. At all.”
At about 370 pages, this book isn’t an exhaustive history by any means, but it’s a good survey of the history of the noose and the evolution of the power behind. This knot has transformed from a physical presence into something that merely needs to be drawn on a piece of paper for its threatening message to come across. The end of the book speaks to the noose in modern America, where even recently, a group of white students in Louisiana hung a noose on their high school campus after a racially-charged incident, although they claimed they didn’t understand the full scope of their actions. This presents an interesting coda: how is the history of the noose being taught to young people today? Did these students truly not understand the historical significance of such an action because it hasn’t been covered in enough depth in school? If they had grown up in another region, would they have had a different understanding? The Thirteenth Turn asks these questions, but maybe it is impossible to find out the answers until we’ve gained some hindsight. At any rate, the questions asked, and the book itself, will stay with you after you’ve finished reading.
(Modified from my original post to my blog, Nonfictionado).
Shuler is borderline conversational: think Mary Roach as she talked about the digestive system in her book Gulp. He’s addressing heavy topics, such as the youngest known victim of the noose, 12 year-old Hannah Occuish, and the rash of lynchings in during Reconstruction. He doesn’t need to dramatize these horrific events, just to provide the facts and to try to provide the right historical context. A chapter on the importance of the knot itself (Knot #1119 in the Ashley Book of Knots), and an early chapter on the Tollund Man, a “bog body” that was found buried with a noose and believed to have been killed for sacrificial purposes, bring more…levity to counter balance the serious chapters.
Sitting on the subway with my Kindle, I felt self-conscious while reading The Thirteenth Turn. What if someone looked over and read a sentence about a particularly brutal lunch mob, or the KKK? Not to mention the images that popped up occasionally, such as of the lynch mob and their victims Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Mason, Indiana (warning: images are reproduced at that link). What would the people near me (and being on the NYC subway, they are of all colors and creeds) think of my book of choice? I felt uncomfortable, which is how I should have felt.
And then I realized “crap, this shouldn’t be about me. At all.”
At about 370 pages, this book isn’t an exhaustive history by any means, but it’s a good survey of the history of the noose and the evolution of the power behind. This knot has transformed from a physical presence into something that merely needs to be drawn on a piece of paper for its threatening message to come across. The end of the book speaks to the noose in modern America, where even recently, a group of white students in Louisiana hung a noose on their high school campus after a racially-charged incident, although they claimed they didn’t understand the full scope of their actions. This presents an interesting coda: how is the history of the noose being taught to young people today? Did these students truly not understand the historical significance of such an action because it hasn’t been covered in enough depth in school? If they had grown up in another region, would they have had a different understanding? The Thirteenth Turn asks these questions, but maybe it is impossible to find out the answers until we’ve gained some hindsight. At any rate, the questions asked, and the book itself, will stay with you after you’ve finished reading.
(Modified from my original post to my blog, Nonfictionado).
collegecate's review against another edition
2.0
I was occasionally uncomfortable reading this book on the bus, even with the book jacket removed. Partly because of the photographs, but also just the title could be provocative. I frequently found myself wondering, along with the interview subjects, just what the author's aim was with this book. I read a lot of micro histories, but it's hard with noose which is also a concept. I think the author made too much of the physicalities of the knot itself and not enough of the ties to extrajudicial murder. Granted, there's a whole section on lynching, but I think he tried too hard to not make every example be of KKK members killing black men. Those examples are in there, but not in (I feel) the correct proportion. He does do a good job explaining the psychological impact of the noose on POC and African Americans in particular today. The example of the school "prank" of hanging a noose on a tree on school property needed to be explained to many of the students...but then the author doesn't point out that they should have learned about the significance of the noose in the American South in school but clearly weren't being taught about it. A book of reporting not of solutions.
In association with [b:Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found|20665578|Severed A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found|Frances Larson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1408931340s/20665578.jpg|39963948] and [b:Executioner's Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair|1176338|Executioner's Current Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair|Richard D. Moran|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1181657678s/1176338.jpg|304062].
In association with [b:Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found|20665578|Severed A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found|Frances Larson|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1408931340s/20665578.jpg|39963948] and [b:Executioner's Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair|1176338|Executioner's Current Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair|Richard D. Moran|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1181657678s/1176338.jpg|304062].
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