Measures taken to make flesh speak. The systematic cruelty that forged modern human rights

Before the modern human rights framework, there was a long and systematic practice of institutionalized pain. This book examines torture not as an aberration but as a normal feature of governance across centuries-from Roman slave interrogations to the secret police cells of twentieth-century dictatorships. It argues that torture has rarely been the work of sadists alone; more often, it has been the product of bureaucracies solving problems of information and control.