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Gentleman's Blood: a History of Dueling From Swords at Dawn to Pistols at Dusk
Describes a history of duels, disputes and dueling weapons throughout history
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
22 people are currently reading
701 people want to read
About the author
Barbara Holland
56 books58 followersBarbara Murray Holland was an American author who wrote in defense of such modern-day vices as cursing, drinking, eating fatty food and smoking cigarettes, as well as a memoir of her time spent growing up in Chevy Chase, Maryland, near Washington, D.C.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews
August 4, 2017
Don't question the chastity of a Spaniard's sister.
Don't call a German a coward.
Just stay the hell out of Ireland.
And if it's over a woman... don't; they seldom get turned on by manslaughter.
Sounds like I'd make a sensible dueler by nature.
A tongue-in-cheek yet comprehensive look at the duel from Homer to the last honourable gentlemen, whose duels begin with discreet car trunks and end with a conviction. Where the German student fraternity is built on beer and fencing and the aristocracy may safely disregard the challenges of the common. This social divide survived the transition from blade to pistol and from Old to New World; indeed frontier America and its well-developed press have left us with some of the most relateable grounds for a High Noon.
Don't call a German a coward.
Just stay the hell out of Ireland.
And if it's over a woman... don't; they seldom get turned on by manslaughter.
Sounds like I'd make a sensible dueler by nature.
A tongue-in-cheek yet comprehensive look at the duel from Homer to the last honourable gentlemen, whose duels begin with discreet car trunks and end with a conviction. Where the German student fraternity is built on beer and fencing and the aristocracy may safely disregard the challenges of the common. This social divide survived the transition from blade to pistol and from Old to New World; indeed frontier America and its well-developed press have left us with some of the most relateable grounds for a High Noon.
June 4, 2008
written in a voice I associate with the vapid reporter from harry potter, or one of those "archeology professors" who just happen to be hanging around Pompeii and will tell you where all the seeexxxx happened, with the sleazy glee of someone exposing an extramarital affair.
April 2, 2012
Somewhat after the fact, I’m reading Barbara Holland’s Gentlemen’s Blood: A History of Dueling from Swords at Dawn to Pistols at Dusk, published in 2004. I should have read it before writing The Affair of the Code Duello, but fortunately I didn’t seem to have committed any major faux pas.
The book is quite entertaining, with Holland’s snarky style that never lets you guess whether she admires or despises the insanity of two men leveling guns at twelve paces. She gives wonderful examples of famous duels: Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr; silly duels: two Frenchmen firing at one another from hot-air balloons (hint: shoot the balloon); bloodless duels: the French clung to dueling, especially with swords, as more performance art; literary duels: Alexander Pushkin, whose Eugene Onegin features a duel and he himself dies in a duel, and Mark Twain, spared a duel by a quick thinking second.
Naturally I thought of the often overlooked duel in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. And then I racked my brain trying to think of a Sherlock Holmes duel, feeling stupid when I realized that the final confrontation at Reichenbach Falls was a duel, but without any of the trappings. How interesting that these two men of intellect chose such a visceral way of settling their differences. No pistols at twelve paces or the cut and thrust of an epee, but hand-to-hand grappling without the back and forth of seconds and challenges and a surgeon to attend to their wounds.
The book is quite entertaining, with Holland’s snarky style that never lets you guess whether she admires or despises the insanity of two men leveling guns at twelve paces. She gives wonderful examples of famous duels: Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr; silly duels: two Frenchmen firing at one another from hot-air balloons (hint: shoot the balloon); bloodless duels: the French clung to dueling, especially with swords, as more performance art; literary duels: Alexander Pushkin, whose Eugene Onegin features a duel and he himself dies in a duel, and Mark Twain, spared a duel by a quick thinking second.
Naturally I thought of the often overlooked duel in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. And then I racked my brain trying to think of a Sherlock Holmes duel, feeling stupid when I realized that the final confrontation at Reichenbach Falls was a duel, but without any of the trappings. How interesting that these two men of intellect chose such a visceral way of settling their differences. No pistols at twelve paces or the cut and thrust of an epee, but hand-to-hand grappling without the back and forth of seconds and challenges and a surgeon to attend to their wounds.
October 28, 2016
Barbara Holland’s “Gentlemen’s Blood” is a series of jaunty anecdotes about dueling through time and around the world. Most of it focuses on America and Britain, with side tours into Germany, France and Russia, touching on famous duelists like Pushkin (who ended up the worse for wear as a result). The book is interesting for those anecdotes, and reading it is a reasonable way to kill some time and get a glimpse, if a circumscribed and brief one, into the ways of the past. But it is most interesting as an exploration of honor, a concept today generally viewed far too simplistically.
Holland covers everything from medieval duels to modern duels, not neglecting Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. (She notes that in popular culture Hamilton is largely forgotten—but then, this was 2003, before Hamilton became a national culture phenomenon again. And I did not know that Burr was a grandson of Jonathan Edwards, the famously strident Puritan minister.) Holland is not actually wholly opposed to dueling. “There was much to like about the duel. It was a regulated way for one man to prevail over another when he felt the need to do so, and an improvement over the informal ambush, or sending out henchmen to break the enemy’s skull by night on the highway.” Elsewhere Holland refers to the “confrontational glory” mostly missing from modern life, which is part of the key to understanding the view of honor that drove dueling.
Implicit in Holland’s semi-endorsement, of course, is that it’s men, not women, who are driven to duel. It is in the nature of men that they, and others, tend to measure their hierarchical worth by their relative physical prowess to other men, measured by the perceived ability to win a fight. Although it is not fashionable to admit it, everyone knows that a young unattached man entering a bar looks at the women, ranking them by appearance and desirability, and looks at the men, ranking them by who is a potential physical threat and who can, and cannot, be dominated if necessary. The young man’s goal is the same as that of a 19th Century French writer quoted by Holland: “A duel makes of every one of us a strong and independent power.” This same set of impulses, dominance, glory and independence, with a consequent implication of hierarchical position for the man (for as social creatures our hierarchy matters to us) must lie behind much dueling.
But “hierarchy” isn’t what one thinks of when one thinks of why men dueled. It’s “honor” one thinks of. But what is honor, and why did dueling retain or increase honor? For instrumentalists like psychologist Steven Pinker, honor is merely “credible deterrence.” A man cultivates a reputation for upholding his honor, by retaliating after some mistreatment, real or perceived. He does this, according to Pinker, because he’s a sheepherder. No, really. Pinker, citing a study finding (unsurprisingly) that Southern Scots-Irish have a hair trigger sense of such honor, concurs with the authors of the study that since many Scots-Irish were herders, and it was easy to steal sheep, having a reputation for a violent response deterred sheep stealing, which would otherwise be commonplace, and this created the honor culture of the American South.
This isn’t a totally fair summary of Pinker (who wrote on this topic after Holland wrote “Gentlemen’s Blood”), because Pinker generalizes this principle to that the more anarchic a region, the more the local culture is an honor culture. If you fail to deter other predatory humans, you face more challenges, and someday you’ll lose a challenge. If you prevent the challenge from arising by ex ante behavior, such as a reputation for dueling to punish slights towards you, you risk less overall. In a stable society with the rule of law and a functioning criminal justice system, the state assumes the role of deterrence and alleviates the need for individuals to provide personal deterrence. Thus, the more anarchy, the more focus on honor (and the more dueling). In today’s American society, we see that honor-based violence is more common among cultures with lower socio-economic status, whose members often don’t feel adequately served by the criminal justice system, or whose cultural norms (“No Snitching”) prevent active participation in the criminal justice system and thus the receipt of its benefits.
All this makes sense. But it doesn’t really explain dueling, because, as Holland’s book shows, dueling was almost exclusively, in every time and place, an upper-class pursuit. (It may be that the lower classes fought at the drop of a hat, to maintain honor with the end of deterrence, but those aren’t duels, which contemplate a formal system and code, as well as broader societal participation of the class involved.) Sometimes the upper class was anarchical: Pinker notes that in medieval Italian city-states dueling served a criminal justice function, in that the law was weak and dueling limited extensive blood feuds. But generally, the upper class was subject to a very well-functioning criminal justice system, which in fact (in the person of nearly every European monarch) tried very hard to stamp out dueling. Cultivating a reputation for dueling could, for a nobleman, serve no instrumental function, at least as far as preventing predation by others. That dueling persisted suggests that anarchy is not the cause of dueling. So why did the focus on maintaining upper-class honor exist, and consequent dueling?
The solution to this conundrum, I think, is to understand that honor as deterrence is a too-narrow conception of honor, and honor as creating and maintaining hierarchical position is the correct template through which to view dueling. “Honor” covers at least two tenuously related concepts: honor as valor vs. honor as virtue (a distinction made in David Hackett Fischer’s “Albion’s Seed,” in its discussion of Virginia early colonial aristocracy and their focus on honor, with no mention of dueling). Each of these have a signaling function that serves to maintain an individual’s hierarchical position (and hierarchy is always more important to the upper classes, who dominate any society). In fact, more than one contemporaneous writer in Holland’s book refers to dueling as necessary to maintain a man’s “position in society,” and resultant “social invisibility,” not predation by others, is frequently cited as the reason to not refuse a challenge.
Honor as valor, “physical courage and tenacity of will” in Fisher’s terms, implies the possibility of violence. That potential violence is threatened against other social equals who would impugn the holder’s status; that is it threatened reduces the chances the holder’s status will decline. Honor as valor can also be outward-directed, toward the enemies of the holder’s class or other group, In this sense it also maintains hierarchical position, but not by deterring social equals, but by aiding the group by showing the holder’s commitment and value to the group, an act that necessarily maintains hierarchical position. And honor as valor shades into honor as virtue, which more broadly benefits both the holder and his group. Honor as virtue, showing gentility, breeding, character and good conduct (again in Fischer’s words), and also including, in part, honor as valor to the extent valor is a virtue, maintains a man’s place in the hierarchy, merely by its show of superiority to the lower classes and to the less honorable members of his own class. Honor as virtue has the additional benefit of allowing all relationships to be smoother, since it increases trust in the holder, and higher trust levels are beneficial both for individuals and societies in accomplishing goals. All this together maintained a man’s hierarchical position, and dueling was part, but only part, of maintaining that position.
Similarly, it is commonly noted that much dueling resulted from offended masculinity and the need to restore it by fighting. This is, of course, something men do—they perceive each other differently based on their physical ability to harm each other, and an erosion in a man’s perceived ability drops him in the hierarchy. Mostly today, under the influence of harridan feminists and neutered pseudo-men, both held up as ideals by the enemies of society, we are told that the pursuit of masculinity is a toxic combination of irrational and evil. There is some truth in this: masculinity creates many problems, while at the same time it solves others and is wholly necessary to drive a society forward. But masculinity, in its many facets, although it is part of male human nature, not a social construct, also serves a valuable signaling function, and so it should not be surprising that duels, with their role of maintaining a man’s hierarchical position, often sprang from threats to masculinity.
What does this imply for today, when the idea of honor, however defined, is viewed as something either faintly ridiculous or something oppressive and smacking of insufficient commitment to the new and decadent ways of social justice? It means, I suppose, that a man’s hierarchical position has to be maintained by something different than honor as valor, or honor as virtue. Maybe it’s money. Maybe nobody cares about hierarchical position in the same way—after, all, “social invisibility” is not generally regarded today as a crushing blow, since a man can generally simply find a new society that manages to find him not invisible. In any case, there was probably a fair bit of societal benefit to a society that valued honor to a high degree, balanced by the sheer waste and stupidity of dueling. All the societies in which dueling flourished were vibrant, growing societies. In part, we remember dueling because we remember the success of those societies. But dueling didn’t cause that flourishing, and it is not coming back. On balance, that’s probably good.
Holland covers everything from medieval duels to modern duels, not neglecting Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. (She notes that in popular culture Hamilton is largely forgotten—but then, this was 2003, before Hamilton became a national culture phenomenon again. And I did not know that Burr was a grandson of Jonathan Edwards, the famously strident Puritan minister.) Holland is not actually wholly opposed to dueling. “There was much to like about the duel. It was a regulated way for one man to prevail over another when he felt the need to do so, and an improvement over the informal ambush, or sending out henchmen to break the enemy’s skull by night on the highway.” Elsewhere Holland refers to the “confrontational glory” mostly missing from modern life, which is part of the key to understanding the view of honor that drove dueling.
Implicit in Holland’s semi-endorsement, of course, is that it’s men, not women, who are driven to duel. It is in the nature of men that they, and others, tend to measure their hierarchical worth by their relative physical prowess to other men, measured by the perceived ability to win a fight. Although it is not fashionable to admit it, everyone knows that a young unattached man entering a bar looks at the women, ranking them by appearance and desirability, and looks at the men, ranking them by who is a potential physical threat and who can, and cannot, be dominated if necessary. The young man’s goal is the same as that of a 19th Century French writer quoted by Holland: “A duel makes of every one of us a strong and independent power.” This same set of impulses, dominance, glory and independence, with a consequent implication of hierarchical position for the man (for as social creatures our hierarchy matters to us) must lie behind much dueling.
But “hierarchy” isn’t what one thinks of when one thinks of why men dueled. It’s “honor” one thinks of. But what is honor, and why did dueling retain or increase honor? For instrumentalists like psychologist Steven Pinker, honor is merely “credible deterrence.” A man cultivates a reputation for upholding his honor, by retaliating after some mistreatment, real or perceived. He does this, according to Pinker, because he’s a sheepherder. No, really. Pinker, citing a study finding (unsurprisingly) that Southern Scots-Irish have a hair trigger sense of such honor, concurs with the authors of the study that since many Scots-Irish were herders, and it was easy to steal sheep, having a reputation for a violent response deterred sheep stealing, which would otherwise be commonplace, and this created the honor culture of the American South.
This isn’t a totally fair summary of Pinker (who wrote on this topic after Holland wrote “Gentlemen’s Blood”), because Pinker generalizes this principle to that the more anarchic a region, the more the local culture is an honor culture. If you fail to deter other predatory humans, you face more challenges, and someday you’ll lose a challenge. If you prevent the challenge from arising by ex ante behavior, such as a reputation for dueling to punish slights towards you, you risk less overall. In a stable society with the rule of law and a functioning criminal justice system, the state assumes the role of deterrence and alleviates the need for individuals to provide personal deterrence. Thus, the more anarchy, the more focus on honor (and the more dueling). In today’s American society, we see that honor-based violence is more common among cultures with lower socio-economic status, whose members often don’t feel adequately served by the criminal justice system, or whose cultural norms (“No Snitching”) prevent active participation in the criminal justice system and thus the receipt of its benefits.
All this makes sense. But it doesn’t really explain dueling, because, as Holland’s book shows, dueling was almost exclusively, in every time and place, an upper-class pursuit. (It may be that the lower classes fought at the drop of a hat, to maintain honor with the end of deterrence, but those aren’t duels, which contemplate a formal system and code, as well as broader societal participation of the class involved.) Sometimes the upper class was anarchical: Pinker notes that in medieval Italian city-states dueling served a criminal justice function, in that the law was weak and dueling limited extensive blood feuds. But generally, the upper class was subject to a very well-functioning criminal justice system, which in fact (in the person of nearly every European monarch) tried very hard to stamp out dueling. Cultivating a reputation for dueling could, for a nobleman, serve no instrumental function, at least as far as preventing predation by others. That dueling persisted suggests that anarchy is not the cause of dueling. So why did the focus on maintaining upper-class honor exist, and consequent dueling?
The solution to this conundrum, I think, is to understand that honor as deterrence is a too-narrow conception of honor, and honor as creating and maintaining hierarchical position is the correct template through which to view dueling. “Honor” covers at least two tenuously related concepts: honor as valor vs. honor as virtue (a distinction made in David Hackett Fischer’s “Albion’s Seed,” in its discussion of Virginia early colonial aristocracy and their focus on honor, with no mention of dueling). Each of these have a signaling function that serves to maintain an individual’s hierarchical position (and hierarchy is always more important to the upper classes, who dominate any society). In fact, more than one contemporaneous writer in Holland’s book refers to dueling as necessary to maintain a man’s “position in society,” and resultant “social invisibility,” not predation by others, is frequently cited as the reason to not refuse a challenge.
Honor as valor, “physical courage and tenacity of will” in Fisher’s terms, implies the possibility of violence. That potential violence is threatened against other social equals who would impugn the holder’s status; that is it threatened reduces the chances the holder’s status will decline. Honor as valor can also be outward-directed, toward the enemies of the holder’s class or other group, In this sense it also maintains hierarchical position, but not by deterring social equals, but by aiding the group by showing the holder’s commitment and value to the group, an act that necessarily maintains hierarchical position. And honor as valor shades into honor as virtue, which more broadly benefits both the holder and his group. Honor as virtue, showing gentility, breeding, character and good conduct (again in Fischer’s words), and also including, in part, honor as valor to the extent valor is a virtue, maintains a man’s place in the hierarchy, merely by its show of superiority to the lower classes and to the less honorable members of his own class. Honor as virtue has the additional benefit of allowing all relationships to be smoother, since it increases trust in the holder, and higher trust levels are beneficial both for individuals and societies in accomplishing goals. All this together maintained a man’s hierarchical position, and dueling was part, but only part, of maintaining that position.
Similarly, it is commonly noted that much dueling resulted from offended masculinity and the need to restore it by fighting. This is, of course, something men do—they perceive each other differently based on their physical ability to harm each other, and an erosion in a man’s perceived ability drops him in the hierarchy. Mostly today, under the influence of harridan feminists and neutered pseudo-men, both held up as ideals by the enemies of society, we are told that the pursuit of masculinity is a toxic combination of irrational and evil. There is some truth in this: masculinity creates many problems, while at the same time it solves others and is wholly necessary to drive a society forward. But masculinity, in its many facets, although it is part of male human nature, not a social construct, also serves a valuable signaling function, and so it should not be surprising that duels, with their role of maintaining a man’s hierarchical position, often sprang from threats to masculinity.
What does this imply for today, when the idea of honor, however defined, is viewed as something either faintly ridiculous or something oppressive and smacking of insufficient commitment to the new and decadent ways of social justice? It means, I suppose, that a man’s hierarchical position has to be maintained by something different than honor as valor, or honor as virtue. Maybe it’s money. Maybe nobody cares about hierarchical position in the same way—after, all, “social invisibility” is not generally regarded today as a crushing blow, since a man can generally simply find a new society that manages to find him not invisible. In any case, there was probably a fair bit of societal benefit to a society that valued honor to a high degree, balanced by the sheer waste and stupidity of dueling. All the societies in which dueling flourished were vibrant, growing societies. In part, we remember dueling because we remember the success of those societies. But dueling didn’t cause that flourishing, and it is not coming back. On balance, that’s probably good.
December 28, 2020
I knew I was going to enjoy this book after I read the first paragraph:
Yup. Men have been doing stupid stuff like this for centuries. They've just changed the name to fit the times. Road rage. Gunfight. Shootout. High noon. Call it what you will, but it all comes back to the duel. And all to save their 'manly' honor. (But women are looked at as emotional or hysterical. Please.)
This was a fascinating book, well written and easily digestible. And at times, even laugh out loud funny. But I did have one issue with it: I couldn't get the 'Ten Duel Commandments' from HAMILTON out of my head while reading. Ah well. All in all, this is just a fantastic book I highly enjoyed.
If, in a bar, someone offends you, and you wheel and knock him off his barstool, and he snatches up a chair and comes after you, this is simply a fight, or a brawl, and the bouncer will break it up and throw you both out. But if, as is still the custom in punctilious places, you invite the villain out to the parking lot ("I had to ask him outside," you report later, ruefully but pridefully), and some of your friends and some of his come along to hold your coats and see fair play, and you fight there, this is a duel. A duel with challenge and acceptance, meeting grounds and seconds. A duel in its final degraded, vestigial form, fought with fists instead of rapiers, but hard to kill off, deeply ingrained in social life, with a thousand years of history.
Yup. Men have been doing stupid stuff like this for centuries. They've just changed the name to fit the times. Road rage. Gunfight. Shootout. High noon. Call it what you will, but it all comes back to the duel. And all to save their 'manly' honor. (But women are looked at as emotional or hysterical. Please.)
This was a fascinating book, well written and easily digestible. And at times, even laugh out loud funny. But I did have one issue with it: I couldn't get the 'Ten Duel Commandments' from HAMILTON out of my head while reading. Ah well. All in all, this is just a fantastic book I highly enjoyed.
June 14, 2012
Really fun anecdotal read regarding dueling. That being said, this is an example of poor historiography and is filled with conjecture posed by the author. The conclusion at the end is pulled out of nowhere and ties no really connections to anything that precedes it. The stories are fun but you would be hard pressed to rely on this author's interpretation as being anything close to the truth.
February 24, 2013
Holland ends the book with the thought that dueling should perhaps be revived in society, and there are parts of me that agree, especially in circumstances where it would be better for leaders to duel rather than trillions of dollars to be spent on destruction and hundreds of thousands of lives to be lost.
”’In October of 2002, when America’s relations with Iraq were sliding quickly toward war, the Iraqi vice president suggested settling the conflict with a double duel: “A president against a president and a vice-president against a vice-president, and a duel takes place, if they are serious, and in this way we are saving the American and Iraqi people.’
He seemed to be in earnest, and there were those who thought it might be a humane and inexpensive solution, but neither of the challenged Americans replied.
Still, it was a thought.”
The introduction and earliest chapters are interesting, but the book very much does not live up to its subtitle of “A History of Dueling from Swords at Dawn to Pistols at Dusk”. The majority of the book is, unfortunately, full of what could be summarized as a historian’s version of gossip. It is so thick on history of the South, from whence the author hails, as to necessitate a cautionary subtitle that would make this abundantly clear to the reader—it is by no means a comprehensive history and does not attempt to be. A martial artist, especially one who practices weapons’ based combat styles, will find the reading extremely tedious, as it is very light on the actual details of combat, deals with duels with guns for 90% of the text, and seems much more obsessed with the cult of the southern gentleman than bringing any real light to history of dueling in the larger world and the long and storied history within other than European and European-American cultures—a very severe deficiency when one begins to contemplate the breadth and depth of dueling traditions and experiences throughout the world. I would love to see a complete and comprehensive work on this subject done—especially by a martial artist, as in Kenji Tokitsu’s scholarly, excellent, and martially informed “Miyamoto Musashi: His Life and Writings” http://www.amazon.com/Miyamoto-Musash...
The chapter on Pushkin was actually very engaging, though not because of martial virtue. And part of me wishes we could fight duels…without legal consequences, though I would rather live like Badshah Khan or Gandhi if I could….
”’In October of 2002, when America’s relations with Iraq were sliding quickly toward war, the Iraqi vice president suggested settling the conflict with a double duel: “A president against a president and a vice-president against a vice-president, and a duel takes place, if they are serious, and in this way we are saving the American and Iraqi people.’
He seemed to be in earnest, and there were those who thought it might be a humane and inexpensive solution, but neither of the challenged Americans replied.
Still, it was a thought.”
The introduction and earliest chapters are interesting, but the book very much does not live up to its subtitle of “A History of Dueling from Swords at Dawn to Pistols at Dusk”. The majority of the book is, unfortunately, full of what could be summarized as a historian’s version of gossip. It is so thick on history of the South, from whence the author hails, as to necessitate a cautionary subtitle that would make this abundantly clear to the reader—it is by no means a comprehensive history and does not attempt to be. A martial artist, especially one who practices weapons’ based combat styles, will find the reading extremely tedious, as it is very light on the actual details of combat, deals with duels with guns for 90% of the text, and seems much more obsessed with the cult of the southern gentleman than bringing any real light to history of dueling in the larger world and the long and storied history within other than European and European-American cultures—a very severe deficiency when one begins to contemplate the breadth and depth of dueling traditions and experiences throughout the world. I would love to see a complete and comprehensive work on this subject done—especially by a martial artist, as in Kenji Tokitsu’s scholarly, excellent, and martially informed “Miyamoto Musashi: His Life and Writings” http://www.amazon.com/Miyamoto-Musash...
The chapter on Pushkin was actually very engaging, though not because of martial virtue. And part of me wishes we could fight duels…without legal consequences, though I would rather live like Badshah Khan or Gandhi if I could….
November 10, 2010
As histories go, this tends rather towards the anecdotal, with good yarns predominating; this has a lot to do with the nature of the material (this is not a subject much adorned with reliable eyewitnesses). Holland can certainly tell a good yarn. The book rolls along easily, is entertaining; there is much snark (not top-shelf snark, but serviceable) at the silliness and brutality of duels, balanced by a strong appreciation of the social reasons for them. At times there's the feeling of a few too many details being left out and of a somewhat cavalier approach to interpretation, but this is pop-history rather than scholarly analysis.
August 22, 2009
Both historical and contemporary viewpoints with a heavy dose of social commentary throughout. Humorous, thought provoking, informative and occasionally a bit wide of the mark, nonetheless quite enjoyable. Not at all dry.
You really do need to read all the way through this, the recitals of various famous duels are especially funny and often biting. THe commentary is quite dry and witty, poking fun at the participants, the attitudes and the countries involved impartially.
The social conclusions at the end were a bit forced though.
You really do need to read all the way through this, the recitals of various famous duels are especially funny and often biting. THe commentary is quite dry and witty, poking fun at the participants, the attitudes and the countries involved impartially.
The social conclusions at the end were a bit forced though.
October 14, 2008
A little too Ameri-centric (OK, far too Ameri-centric for a book that bills itself as a general history of dueling), a little too much unsubstantiated opinion in the closing chapters, and a little too flippant and breezy in tone. Picked it up from the discount table, and frankly I think I was overcharged.
August 4, 2012
While overall I enjoyed learning about the history of dueling, I often found the author's narrative style difficult to follow.
January 2, 2022
I have been interested in duelling for awhile. I think it's really interesting how it ties into masculinity and privilege and the concept of honour historically and it also has an undeniable romantic, exciting tinge to it. So when I wanted to learn more Barabara Holland's book seemed ideal: a witty history of duelling.
Gentlemen's Blood offers a sweeping overview of duelling in Europe and the US so is a good starting point for anybody interested in the history of duelling but unsure where to begin. Additionally, Holland's witty writing style and frequent quips about how ridiculous masculine honour was are very amusing and kept me engaged for much of the book. I liked how the history was told in lots of anecdotes, sometimes seemingly selected because they were particularly bizarre or funny, but often because they were about notable figures.
The major con of the book, for me, was that there were far more chapters about duelling in the US than Europe, presumably because Holland was writing for a US audience as that is where she is from. I think Holland may have been better served by writing only about US duelling, as the coverage of European duelling ends up being a very shallow history and I feel there is still much for me to learn.
The other con is that, again because of the breadth Holland was trying to give, her picture of duelling is not very nuanced. Her narrative is this: duelling was rampant and ridiculous. The way she tells it, it seems surprising that there were any men left alive at all because she makes it sound as if they were all habitually shooting each other on the daily. This situation seems unlikely to be a genuinely accurate picture, particularly since Holland acknowledges that most places had laws against duelling which must have dissauded at least some potential duellists.
So overall I was entertained by the book and it definitely gave me ideas about what I would like to learn more about but I am not sure that I have learnt a great deal about duelling so far other than a few amusing anecdotes about particuarly ridiculous duellists.
This book is out of print. Overall, I am not sure it worth the effort of finding a second hand copy to read as I suspect there are better texts still in print for those with any interest in duelling.
Gentlemen's Blood offers a sweeping overview of duelling in Europe and the US so is a good starting point for anybody interested in the history of duelling but unsure where to begin. Additionally, Holland's witty writing style and frequent quips about how ridiculous masculine honour was are very amusing and kept me engaged for much of the book. I liked how the history was told in lots of anecdotes, sometimes seemingly selected because they were particularly bizarre or funny, but often because they were about notable figures.
The major con of the book, for me, was that there were far more chapters about duelling in the US than Europe, presumably because Holland was writing for a US audience as that is where she is from. I think Holland may have been better served by writing only about US duelling, as the coverage of European duelling ends up being a very shallow history and I feel there is still much for me to learn.
The other con is that, again because of the breadth Holland was trying to give, her picture of duelling is not very nuanced. Her narrative is this: duelling was rampant and ridiculous. The way she tells it, it seems surprising that there were any men left alive at all because she makes it sound as if they were all habitually shooting each other on the daily. This situation seems unlikely to be a genuinely accurate picture, particularly since Holland acknowledges that most places had laws against duelling which must have dissauded at least some potential duellists.
So overall I was entertained by the book and it definitely gave me ideas about what I would like to learn more about but I am not sure that I have learnt a great deal about duelling so far other than a few amusing anecdotes about particuarly ridiculous duellists.
This book is out of print. Overall, I am not sure it worth the effort of finding a second hand copy to read as I suspect there are better texts still in print for those with any interest in duelling.
February 11, 2018
So I knew I was going to like this book as soon as I picked it up and saw the title. But I didn't realize what a true pleasure reading this book would be - it is excellent! Holland does a wonderful job of integrating proper historical context and explanations alongside dramatic accounts of men facing off to avenge their apparently insulted honor. I especially enjoyed the care that she took to flesh out some of the more significant players in the narrative, as well as to acknowledge the sometimes blurred line between fact and rumor that accounts of duels often straddle. Equally pleasing is Holland's attention to geographical and historical range - she doesn't cover simply America, but her account spans Europe from the medieval to the modern age, as well as featuring deeper dives into German, Russian, and French dueling culture as well. Lastly, Holland writes with a witty, at times bemused tone, which helps lend some levity to an otherwise rather grim subject.
April 13, 2021
A fun and interesting look at the history of honour duels and encounters ranging from the initial bouts of swordsmanship, up through the pistols of Hamilton and Burr, to the more modern encounters that still take place around the world.
The book is an enjoyable and witty read, with history interlaced with humour throughout which definitely makes for a fun read that makes you laugh as you learn. I particularly found the section on rules interesting, as many were blatantly ignored by many whereas others were adjusted for time and location.
I initially read this as an accompanying text to my undergraduate dissertation on the role of honour in 18th and 19th century America and found many of the anecdotes useful to add flavour to my primarily data driven text. It certainly helped me achieve a high mark and made the whole process fun as well!
If you are looking for hard and dry history then this isn't it, but if you want something accessible and witty then you've definitely got something to enjoy here.
The book is an enjoyable and witty read, with history interlaced with humour throughout which definitely makes for a fun read that makes you laugh as you learn. I particularly found the section on rules interesting, as many were blatantly ignored by many whereas others were adjusted for time and location.
I initially read this as an accompanying text to my undergraduate dissertation on the role of honour in 18th and 19th century America and found many of the anecdotes useful to add flavour to my primarily data driven text. It certainly helped me achieve a high mark and made the whole process fun as well!
If you are looking for hard and dry history then this isn't it, but if you want something accessible and witty then you've definitely got something to enjoy here.
December 28, 2025
Disappointed that this was less of a review of dueling/combat across many cultures, and was instead more “here’s a bunch of European and American duels that were pretty cool”. Many of the stories were interesting but I found myself wanting more. I’m not sure why the author would focus on truncated histories of figures like Hamilton and Pushkin, the lens of dueling didn’t add much to my understanding from other historic works. The few times it does try to weave together an analysis across cultures and times, I thought it was pretty trite “men be fighting, women be being oppressed” crammed into a few pages.
July 1, 2017
Picked this up as research for some stories I'm writing and wasn't disappointed. The author's voice comes down to a matter of literary tastes, but I found it easy to stay for the bloody, often times amusing slices of dueling throughout history.
July 27, 2018
Who knew dueling could be so interesting
What an interesting and fun read. Very informative with a bit of humor. I saw a lecture on the Hamilton, Burr duel which made me want to know more about dueling in general. This book did not disappoint.
What an interesting and fun read. Very informative with a bit of humor. I saw a lecture on the Hamilton, Burr duel which made me want to know more about dueling in general. This book did not disappoint.
November 27, 2024
Overall a well-written, detailed overview of the history of duels. I wish there were more compelling examples of unusual duels which I've seen in other books or the duels fought by women. On the other hand, some chapters went on and on with explanations and I ended up skimming them.
May 22, 2024
My interest started to wane a lot, hence not finishing it very quickly. The chapter about the dueling culture of 19th century Russia and everything involving Pushkin was interesting, though.
November 12, 2014
So my first thought when I started reading this book is: "This is terrible". I'm not one to typically read non-fiction books, so this was a new foray for me, but for the first few chapters, as Holland explores the history of duelling from the middle ages to the 19th century, she is scattered. She talks about one thing, then the other, with scarce a pause or clear structure to her arguments. Dates are notably missing, making it hard to form a good idea of when each event occurred relative to one-another.
However, a few chapters in, Holland turns to what is for her a more domestic matter, and picks up the complex tale that is the history of duelling in America. She spend a very large portion of the book talking about her home turf and the different personalities that shaped duelling there, with gripping mini-narratives of each victory/defeat, and a very entertaining prose. She later revisits other countries, albeit with none of the depth with which she discusses America, and these, too, are entertaining. It seems that Holland needed to find her footing before she got into it, but once she was, she was in it for the rest of the book.
Perhaps a better title for this novel would be 'The History of Duelling in America', because that's honestly what I felt it was. While a reasonable portion of the book was dedicated to other countries, these countries served only as a backdrop in Holland's narrative, and this was a disappointment as it was not what I had felt that I had been promised.
Would I recommend this book? I certainly learnt a number of entertaining facts about duelling, and the roles it played in society the world over. It was, once it got started, a fairly entertaining book, but I would not recommend it unless I knew the person to whom I was recommending the book had a particular interest in that slice of history, be it colonial American history, or the history of duels. I simply wouldn't feel like it's worth the trip unless you genuinely wanted to learn about it, but for those who do want, it's a glorious trip indeed.
However, a few chapters in, Holland turns to what is for her a more domestic matter, and picks up the complex tale that is the history of duelling in America. She spend a very large portion of the book talking about her home turf and the different personalities that shaped duelling there, with gripping mini-narratives of each victory/defeat, and a very entertaining prose. She later revisits other countries, albeit with none of the depth with which she discusses America, and these, too, are entertaining. It seems that Holland needed to find her footing before she got into it, but once she was, she was in it for the rest of the book.
Perhaps a better title for this novel would be 'The History of Duelling in America', because that's honestly what I felt it was. While a reasonable portion of the book was dedicated to other countries, these countries served only as a backdrop in Holland's narrative, and this was a disappointment as it was not what I had felt that I had been promised.
Would I recommend this book? I certainly learnt a number of entertaining facts about duelling, and the roles it played in society the world over. It was, once it got started, a fairly entertaining book, but I would not recommend it unless I knew the person to whom I was recommending the book had a particular interest in that slice of history, be it colonial American history, or the history of duels. I simply wouldn't feel like it's worth the trip unless you genuinely wanted to learn about it, but for those who do want, it's a glorious trip indeed.
July 30, 2012
This is quite informative and chronicles the development of dueling from the middle ages to present day. The author really details the social impact of dueling as well and how it moved from being a knightly activity in the middle ages, to something the idle nobles were expected to engage in in later centuries, to the wild west shootouts. Holland also does a great job of explaining the nuances that developed between various European countries, and later the united States, with regard to the specifics of dueling practices and meanings ascribed to the practice at various times.
Where the book began to bog for me was in the lengthy narratives describing actual duels. Sometimes I got a bit bored following who insulted whom and how and who had to carry the various messages. I will say it did illustrate the point that there were very elaborate and detailed codes regarding how duels were issued and, pardon the pun, executed via the duelists and their seconds.
Holland's style at times becomes overly flowery, seemingly to mimic the style of the written challenges, but I did enjoy having my vocabulary challenged. That was actually refreshing given how many contemporary authors seem to write on an elementary school level. The author has a dry wit which was most effective in her conclusions when making a given point.
Her final point that perhaps if dueling were still alive and well as a practice there might be less seemingly random violence is a bit hard to swallow. However, her final revelation that just before the U.S. invaded Iraq the Iraqi V.P. suggested her and the president duel their U.S. counterparts and avoid the messy war is enough to make anyone grieved by the deaths on both sides wish the ones rushing to send our men and women to battle had demonstrated the guts to let their own blood be shed instead so the matter would have been settled as soon as it began.
Where the book began to bog for me was in the lengthy narratives describing actual duels. Sometimes I got a bit bored following who insulted whom and how and who had to carry the various messages. I will say it did illustrate the point that there were very elaborate and detailed codes regarding how duels were issued and, pardon the pun, executed via the duelists and their seconds.
Holland's style at times becomes overly flowery, seemingly to mimic the style of the written challenges, but I did enjoy having my vocabulary challenged. That was actually refreshing given how many contemporary authors seem to write on an elementary school level. The author has a dry wit which was most effective in her conclusions when making a given point.
Her final point that perhaps if dueling were still alive and well as a practice there might be less seemingly random violence is a bit hard to swallow. However, her final revelation that just before the U.S. invaded Iraq the Iraqi V.P. suggested her and the president duel their U.S. counterparts and avoid the messy war is enough to make anyone grieved by the deaths on both sides wish the ones rushing to send our men and women to battle had demonstrated the guts to let their own blood be shed instead so the matter would have been settled as soon as it began.
January 19, 2016
Here's a sentence from the book. "The trunks are massive and bulging, no two grown alike, grotesquely molded, trunks such as a prehistoric rhinoceros would have if a rhinoceros were a tree."
The book immediately and glaringly suffers from a lack of structure which combined with poor editing leaves the topic repetitive in format and unexplored.
Identities are thrown in casually as though we should be bored by familiarity with the characters in question. The subject may become too boring if pursued in minor detail but perhaps the most compelling story conveyed in the book took place in Russia over the span of several pages, setting up characters and grievances in more than a paragraph unlike 90% of the others. Basically, the format of the stories recounted, A offends B, B challenges A, A and B duel, A or B dies comprises at least half of the book. It all begins to drift together and doesn't stand out due to excessive brevity. That said the subject is interesting and the book begins to take some structure after several chapters, improving upon the unreadability of the first few.
The book immediately and glaringly suffers from a lack of structure which combined with poor editing leaves the topic repetitive in format and unexplored.
Identities are thrown in casually as though we should be bored by familiarity with the characters in question. The subject may become too boring if pursued in minor detail but perhaps the most compelling story conveyed in the book took place in Russia over the span of several pages, setting up characters and grievances in more than a paragraph unlike 90% of the others. Basically, the format of the stories recounted, A offends B, B challenges A, A and B duel, A or B dies comprises at least half of the book. It all begins to drift together and doesn't stand out due to excessive brevity. That said the subject is interesting and the book begins to take some structure after several chapters, improving upon the unreadability of the first few.
August 27, 2015
An introduction to the age-old sport of dueling. This book does not take itself too seriously, and Barbara Holland writes with a snarkiness that makes all of the men dying in such encounters more worthy of disdain than admiration.
Her Southern bias is very clear, not only because of the many pages devoted to Southern dueling, but also because, among other things, she dismisses the Sally Hemings-Thomas Jefferson relationship with an airy sentence that seems to imply that there was no truth to the matter: When John Callender wrote in his newspaper, the Richmond Recorder, about the affair, Holland writes: "He offered absolutely no evidence of any kind and seems to have invented it himself..." And Holland was writing in 2003, long after DNA testing has proved the scandal to be accurate.
There are no footnotes, which tells the reader that this is not a serious academic work, but Holland does list a bibliography with many other books on dueling for the serious scholar to pursue.
Her Southern bias is very clear, not only because of the many pages devoted to Southern dueling, but also because, among other things, she dismisses the Sally Hemings-Thomas Jefferson relationship with an airy sentence that seems to imply that there was no truth to the matter: When John Callender wrote in his newspaper, the Richmond Recorder, about the affair, Holland writes: "He offered absolutely no evidence of any kind and seems to have invented it himself..." And Holland was writing in 2003, long after DNA testing has proved the scandal to be accurate.
There are no footnotes, which tells the reader that this is not a serious academic work, but Holland does list a bibliography with many other books on dueling for the serious scholar to pursue.
August 31, 2015
If all you want are ill-referenced anecdotes and opinion masquerading as fact, this book is fine. It may work as an introduction to the topic, but any further exploration will reveal dreadful inadequacies. Using this book for information is like using Errol Flynn movies to learn about Medieval England, or Twilight novels to learn about Seattle.
Bluntly, this book reads like a 2003 update of RBaldick's 1965 work, here written by and for Americans where the other was by and for the English. Every vignette from Europe is his, as are about a third of the American ones. He also tells a better story, or maybe I'm just less disappointed by his chauvinism. If that is what you want to read, bypass this and go read the original.
Bluntly, this book reads like a 2003 update of RBaldick's 1965 work, here written by and for Americans where the other was by and for the English. Every vignette from Europe is his, as are about a third of the American ones. He also tells a better story, or maybe I'm just less disappointed by his chauvinism. If that is what you want to read, bypass this and go read the original.
February 1, 2010
Killjoys may take issue with the author's breezy tone, but this is supposed to be a fun book, and it is. If you want to read something by a stodgy historian, look elsewhere. This one contains loads of amusing anecdotes and juicy trivia. For example, who knew that future President James Monroe considered challenging then-President John Adams to a duel? And I hadn't known that the Hamilton-Burr duel took place right where Hamilton's eldest son had been killed in a duel three years earlier.
That said, this book could have been condensed considerably. For example, the stories about Pushkin were interesting, but I don't think the author needed to devote an entire chapter to him.
That said, this book could have been condensed considerably. For example, the stories about Pushkin were interesting, but I don't think the author needed to devote an entire chapter to him.
June 27, 2013
Really sharp, concisely written history. A thousand tiny, interesting stories. A wonderful, thought-provoking look at something embedded in our culture and yet perversely foreign to modern thinking.
I am only half-way through. So far I'd give it an A+ on the history and the questions it makes me ask myself.
So far I'd give it only a B+ on the detailed philosophical exploration of those questions... the part that will really grab me. Or maybe I'm supposed to do that work myself... we'll see...
I am only half-way through. So far I'd give it an A+ on the history and the questions it makes me ask myself.
So far I'd give it only a B+ on the detailed philosophical exploration of those questions... the part that will really grab me. Or maybe I'm supposed to do that work myself... we'll see...
January 2, 2016
You'll never see a swashbucklin' movie the same way again! Holland provides scads of fascinating minutia about the history of duelling, its weapons and participants, its horror and its absurdity. You may find yourself trying to turn conversations toward the subject of duelling just so that you can share some of these remarkable anecdotes.
Charmingly written, too.
Charmingly written, too.
August 7, 2012
Great book. Certainly thought-provoking, on the way society deals with conflict today vs. even a hundred years ago. It's an interesting glimpse into a very significant aspect of society for at least the last several hundred years. But most interesting are the dozens of personal stories ending in physical conflict that make up the body of the book.
January 15, 2014
It was readable, as nonfiction goes, and fairly interesting.Not a gripper, read in one sitting type though. The social commentary in the afterward seemed a bit silly to me but I suppose a nonfiction writer feels the need to put their opinion in somewhere. I think most males work out their aggression in sports
August 13, 2009
This is a fantastic history -- enlightening, startling, amusing.
Sandra Gulland
Author of the Josephine B. Trilogy and Mistress of the Sun
Website: http://www.sandragulland.com/
Blog: http://sandragulland.blogspot.com/
Sandra Gulland
Author of the Josephine B. Trilogy and Mistress of the Sun
Website: http://www.sandragulland.com/
Blog: http://sandragulland.blogspot.com/
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