Download or read book Lethal Imagination written by Michael A. Bellesiles and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1999-03 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining the role of violence in America's past, this collection of essays explores its history and development from slave patrols in the colonial South to gun ownership in the 20th century. The contributors focus not only on individual acts such as domestic violence, murder, duelling, frontier vigilantism and rape, but also on group and state-led acts such as lynchings, slave uprisings, the establishment of rifle clubs, legal sanctions of heterosexual aggression, and invasive medical experiments on women's bodies.