Gentlemen's Blood A History of Dueling from Swords at Dawn to Pistols at Dusk

Barbara Holland guides us lightheartedly through the touchy subject of honor-and how to defend it-in this compulsively readable history of dueling's first thousand years. 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. Here are their stories, from Dumas'sThree Musketeersto America's founding fathers, including the New Orleans doctors who settled their medical disagreements under The Oaks, the short-lived newspaper editors of America's South and West, and certain twenty-first-century Parisian politicians. The duel was essential to private, public, and political life. Where it was technically illegal, those who followed the elaborate codes of procedure were seldom prosecuted and rarely convicted: they were obeying a grand old tradition.Gentlemen's Bloodis the definitive guide to this courtly violence, from an author called "a witty curmudgeon" by George Will and "a national treasure" by thePhiladelphia Inquirer, whose style, according toKirkus Reviews, "fits somewhere between E.B. White and Andy Rooney." A Smithsonian Magazine Selection. "In this charming work, Holland (Hail to the Chiefs) illuminates men's age-old obsession with pairing up for mortal combat. She is clearly fond of her subject in part because she finds it so bewildering and demonstrates the endearing qualities of a fascinatingly stupid male ritual through sarcasm and wit . . . More a chronology of particular duels (from the year 501 to 2002) than a history of duelling, the narrative moves from the upper classes of Europe in the sword's heyday through the introduction of guns to duelling, which made the ritual accessible to the masses, and into America where duels took off just as they were primarily dying out elsewhere. Accounts of both famous duels such as the Aaron Burr-Alexander Hamilton case and the ongoing feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys are liberally mixed with intriguing but lesser known tiffs. Students will be shocked to learn how much of America's early history involved duelling: doctors in New Orleans settled medical disputes by shooting each other, and newspapermen had to set schedules for when they were open to take challenges . . . An accessible and unique angle on the subject."Library JournalHolland, Barbara is the author of 'Gentlemen's Blood A History of Dueling from Swords at Dawn to Pistols at Dusk', published 2003 under ISBN 9781582343662 and ISBN 1582343667.