I happened to stumble upon a documentary about dueling on TV the other day, and was fascinated by this tradition. If someone insults you, you have to kill them. Why? This is both fascinating and absurd, so of course I had to learn more about duels.
I started off by reading Gentlemen's Blood (Bloomsbury, 2003) which tells the history of dueling through stories of private duels.
The way the book is written makes it both interesting and funny. Barbara Holland's ironic humour shows the tragedy and the absurdness of dueling. The only thing that annoyed me was the old "men needs to fight because they're men" approach. I don't believe in theories like that. But, disregarding the above, I had fun reading.
I say: ***(**)
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