
Whack Job: A History of Axe Murder
by Rachel McCarthy James
For millennia, the axe has served as a vital survival tool but also a weapon exemplifying the bloody nexus of technology and human violence, according to Rachel McCarthy James's bewitching Whack Job. "Every murder weapon has an innate interest," James says, and she claims none more so than the ubiquitous axe, the star attraction in this eclectic mix of 12 true stories of murder by hatchet. From the neolithic to the present, each story highlights a particular axe and how it exemplified the blade's evolution