One Bloody Thing After Another

by Jacob F. Field (Contributor)

A bloodstained tour through ages of torment, 'One Bloody Thing After Another' explores the blood and guts of yesteryear, from the Crusades and medieval dungeons to the Reign of Terror and witch trials.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Horror, Historical, World History, European History, American History

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Jacob F. Field is a historian and writer. He grew up in South London, completed his undergraduate degree in History at the University of Oxford, and then moved to Newcastle University for his PhD. He completed his doctoral thesis on the Great Fire of London in 2008, and has worked as a research associate at the University of Cambridge since then. Jacob has contributed to books including 1001 Historical Sites and 1001 Battles That Changed The Course Of History and published articles in journals including Economic History Review, London Journal and Urban History.

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

more of 2.5 really. I enjoyed the facts but found the layout of it very disjointed. I think this book would be better suited if I just picked it up once in while rather than continuous reading.

[Rıdvan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fikir şu. Özellikle günümüzde demokrasi, insan hakları, temel hak ve özgürlükler konusunda dünyanın geri kalanına ahkam kesen hatta bu uğurda oraya buraya müdahale eden ülkeleri tarih bıyunca o kadar çok pislik yapmış ki!
Kitapta bütün o katliamlar, canice, canavarca yapılmış işkenceler listelenmiş. Kısa kusa bahsedip geçmiş yazar hepsinden.
Biraz detay vermeye kalksa kitap 3 cilde çıkacak.
Ama yine de bence biraz hikayeleri derinleştirebilirdi.
Böylede çok yavan olmuş.
Tarihin 3 sayfa haberlerini toplayıp kitaplaştırmış gibi olmuş.
Ama tabi herkesin durumu içler acısı. Osmanlı’dan kitap boyunca iki yerde kısacık bahsediliyor. Ama adam olana yeter denecek türden rezaletler var tabi orada da.

[Literary Ames · Rating 4 out of 5]

*Warning: Much violence described in this review. Not for those with weak stomachs. Seriously.

Weak and cowardly - that's what the people of this book would believe of us in the developed world today. We'd call ourselves civilised and our forbears barbarians, but humanity's managed to survive through some exceptionally horrific times. Many lessons can certainly be learned from our history.

Some Survival Tips:

✻ Expedition of exploration is code for "suicide mission".
✻ If a relative or close friend is/could be in a position of power and authority, run far away and go into hiding.
✻ Never love anyone. They can be used against you or slaughtered in front of you.
✻ Never own anything worth killing for.
✻ When war breaks out, relocate from the warzone.
✻ Be willing to switch religion at a moment's notice.
✻ Any weapon you possess may be used against you.
✻ If you're an executioner, always keep your blade sharp.
✻ Hide all books in a fireproof place, behind lock and key.

Funny, informative and riveting. One Bloody Thing After Another reads like an adult version of Horrible Histories, divulging all the best bits and possibly the least well known parts of our bloody world history in an engrossing and funny manner. Illustrations and maps of territories belonging to different empires throughout the ages are included. All were perfectly rendered on my Kindle.

Events are covered up to 1900 and range from the natural disasters like plague, earthquake and volcanic eruption, to the man-made horrors of war, genocide, serial killers, assassinations, and the crazy inventive methods and devices of torture. Brief but detailed summaries of events are given in easily digestible chunks, each one taking up only a handful of paragraphs so it was hard to get bored. Origin stories of certain fictional works are described, for example, Gilles de Rais was the inspiration for Bluebeard by Charles Perrault.

The torture. Yikes. Be careful what you invent in the way of devices because someone might turn around and use it against you, as in the case of the Brazen Bull. I wouldn't mind if the Wall Street Bull was converted so we can roast a few fat cat bankers. I'll provide the marshmallows.

While we're on the subject, I'm calling shenanigans on the double standard regarding female torturers and serial killers receiving lame punishments when their male counterparts were tortured and killed for their crimes. Examples:


❶ Elizabeth Báthory had her servant girls 'beaten and their lips pierced with pins' and 'red-hot irons were pressed on to the feet and mouths'. 'Victims were dragged naked into the snow and had water poured onto them until they froze to death. One servant girl was stripped, covered with honey and left overnight to be stung and bitten by insects.' At age 44 her husband died (1604). New servant girls were acquired and 'daughters of the gentry were invited to live in her castle.' 'At least 300 girls and women, nobly born as well as commoners ... were put to death in an inhuman and cruel manner. She cut their flesh and made them grill it; afterwards she would make them eat bits of their own body.'

Punishment: 'Lifelong house arrest in the castle where she had committed her foul deeds.'


❷ Darya Saltykova in 1756 inherited 600 serfs from her husband and promptly started torturing them for pleasure. Several years and the unexplained disappearance of 138 girls later, she was found guilty of murdering 38 serfs.

Punishment: 1 hour in a pillory in Moscow and imprisoned in an underground cell in a convent where she experienced total darkness until death in 1801.


❸ Ranavalona proclaimed herself queen of Madagascar in 1828 and began torturing, crucifying and beheading Christians. 'Brigands, runaway slaves and rebels were flayed alive, sawn in half or had their testicles slowly crushed.' *winces* She also tested for treason in arbitrary ways similar to the identification of witches, one of which involved 'progressive amputation'. 'After each amputation, the victim was invited to confess their crimes.' Most died from shock and blood loss.

Punishment: In 1861 she died in her sleep. No punishment meted out.


Hardly justice for those that suffered at their soft, pampered hands. Perhaps being rich has its perks.

But successful innocent women were also suspicious. Poor Hypatia, 'head of the Platonist School in the city [Alexandria, Egypt] and possibly the first major female mathematician' was rumoured to practise witchcraft. Of course, she was. She was also vocally against the persecutions of Jews. What happened to her? Apprehended, taken to a church to be stripped and beaten to death. Charming.

Boudica and Joan of Arc also met violent ends, but they participated in and started wars so it was a hazard of the job. Surprisingly, there were methods of violence against women I had never considered, for instance the ripping out of foetuses and either killing them or sewing them to the mouths/breasts of their mothers. Sadistic. Breast mutilation and removal, also quite common. And now my mind is conceiving of methods not mentioned.

I apologise to friends and followers for my over-eager and excessive status updates for this 190-page book clogging up your feeds. Honestly, I tried to limit them in number and keep the most gruesome parts out to protect any weak stomachs.

Boring history is boring no longer with this book. Anyone even vaguely interested should give it a go, because I thoroughly enjoyed it.


Currently available for £1.09 in the UK Kindle Sale!

[Nicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not exactly a taxing read, but kind of fun if you're interested in a whistle-stop tour of the gruesome bits of history -- I like Amy's description of it as Horrible Histories for adults. Nothing in depth, just brief descriptions of different kinds of tortures and massacres.

[Elle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book made for a great dipper and while I found it difficult at times to follow the time line, it was a book of interesting and quite gruesome facts. It had enough information to satisfy and left me wanting to research some topics more. The things I did know about in some detail were represented well, if a little glossed over.

[Gülay Akbal · Rating 3 out of 5]

orta seviyede sevdiğim bir kitap oldu.

[Bert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty much exactly what it says on the tin, but could have done with another round of polish. A brief, entertaining swipe across the surface of history's gory bits. The definition of "gruesome" is a bit loose and ranges from the weird and gory torture methods I was expecting to see described to just 'a bazillion people died in a fire this year'. I think I would have preferred the word count go to a little further depth on the genuinely gruesome in place of some of the vignettes which just recount numbers killed in disasters or acts of war, but overall I thought it was enjoyable to read.

The design and layout of the book also feels a bit random and disorganised, and is probably my main quibble. It could have done with dividing the historical periods further into theme or by geography (with more maps), and the selection of segments to be set into boxes doesn't seem to have a particular system. In some places the book follows a particular figure or family across a few headings, preceded by an introductory paragraph, but the layout doesn't adequately distinguish an introduction from those gruesome moments which only get a single paragraph. I didn't have as much trouble with the way it jumps around as some reviewers but I think it could have been confusing if I weren't already vaguely familiar with the content. The illustrations are nice but sparse, and I really like the cover.

[Matt Sowell · Rating 2 out of 5]

More of a list of things that happened with very little details into the events around those things

As a history buff, I was disappointed in how fast and sparse the facts were. There was no real layout to the book as it jumped around a lot and even the sentences felt short and lacking.

It read a bit like someone writing a history report with too many facts they want to get out and not enough discussion.

Was it a good book? Yes. It did have a lot of interesting details and it did touch on a lot of important events. But as others noted in their reviews, this is not a book you can easily pick up and read straight through.

The ending was also extremely anti-climatic. There was a very decent intro but the ending just lists off one last event that happened and stops there at a random point in history at a random event that was no where near as well noted as some of the others. It was like the author ran out of things or was cut off by the publisher.

[Derryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun, quick tour of some of the bloodiest history moments.
My biggest issue with this book was how disjointed it was, perhaps it would have been better to arrange by region rather than jumping back and forth in time.
🖤🖤🖤

[CELAL ALTUNBAS · Rating 3 out of 5]

İnsanların, insanlığı dehşete düşürdüğü anekdotlar.

[Jag Garcia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bleh. The title was far more exciting than the contents of this book.

Although containing a fairly large number of historical tidbits that is all they exactly were: tidbits.

Lacking in any deep description or development, the historical tidbits were even written in a very dry, matter of fact way that belied the title.

Don't bother with this unless you're an absolute fan of factoids.

[Syed Ali Hussain Bukhari · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jacob F. Field's 'One Bloody Thing After Another', is a wonderful, precise but summarized account of the world's gruesome history. It encapsulates the bloody happenings from 1000 B.C till 1900 A.D. Any light-hearted person may feel disgust while reading because of most brutal events described here are having a smart explanation that can install fearful images in the mind for some time. Anyhow, it's an amazing work that improves the general knowledge about the savage happenings in the timeline.

[Maddy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really easy-to-read history book, with snippets from around the globe and throughout all history. Interesting little read for those interested in the macabre.

[Ed Callahan · Rating 2 out of 5]

The best way to describe this book is a "chronicle of cruelty." Field's goal is to set forth some of the more gruesome events in in human history, and he does an interesting job of doing so. But everything is presented in such concise, vignette format, that it is difficult to discern any finer details. Familiarity with many components of world history will help fill in the blanks, and the book is best used in a high school classroom as a kind of "supplement" to the overall world history narrative to fill in some missing or more interesting details.

Strangely, Field spends much time examining the chronicle of cruelty prior to the 20th century, but ignores the modern world. There is no discussion of the Boer War and British acts of cruelty and starvation against the Afrikaaner community. Also absent are the genocides which have punctuated thee 20th century: Armenia, Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda, the regimes of Stalin and Mao, Bosnia, and Darfur to name a few. The abrupt ending of the book is jarring.

One can only hope that subsequent editions will extend the narrative to include more information about the 20th century, and that the episodes chosen would be a bit less skewed against Western Civilization. A concluding essay would help tie things together. Its absence is its own form of cruelty.

[Kevin Dang · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is exactly what the title advertises: One bloody thing after another. Each example of gore, massacre and torture goes anywhere from a a paragraph to a page, which means that there is minimal context as the author gets straight to the best part. Thus, sometimes I had no idea who the tyrants/princes/figureheads/rivals/evil jerks were. But I was mostly fine with that because the forms of torture were insanely interesting and bittersweetly creative. My favorite part of the book was reading about the power abusers who eventually got the torture they dished out carelessly. My least favorite part was reading about how thousands and thousand (entire communities!) would get tortured, raped, and slaughtered all in one day. The constantly implied theme of crazy rulers abusing their power, only to make the people angry and then get overthrown, makes you realize just how important and fair our political setup is. But then you realize Donald Trump might be president and you notice he is just as crazy, selfish, and stupid as some of the "leaders" in this book. Overall, a fantastic read! I would give 5 stars, but the lack of a final word from the author makes for an abrupt, what-the-f@*k ending.

[Samantha · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is exactly what you would expect from the title: one bloody thing after another. In the shape of vignettes, the author lists bloody events (wars,civil uproars, arson), evil rulers and kings and natural disasters such as earthquakes.

The book can come across a little convoluted. As a reader, I often wondered what the criterion to choose the events was, and the mix of events from extremely distant geographical points did make the reading difficult. I also wish it had more maps, or that it had included a general map per section. Finally, I felt it ended a little abruptly, without a word from the author to sign off. Those are my major concerns.

On the plus side, the book is accessible for the general audience, there's no need to be a history buff to follow it. It also made me look up more information for some sections (and, to me, sparking curiosity is always a good quality in a book). While some bits were indeed gruesome ("scaphism" was one of them), I did not find the book sensationalist and I see myself reading it a second time in the future.

[Cat Evans · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'd like to give Jacob Field props for being ambitious and trying to bring to life the many, many afwul things people have done to one another over the course of recorded history, but I just can't make myself. Covering so much, this book could never have been anything but a top-level affair but it felt so unbelievably lifeless, like its natural format was a bullet-point list as long as my arm. It's coverage of each entry was so scant that it actually had the effect of making each of these people and events LESS horrific, reducing sieges, plagues, natural disasters and mass murder to an endless series of statistics.

There were also entries that felt out of keeping with the subtitle of 'gruesome history.' George III's madness, while unfortunate and serious, was probably not 'gruesome,' and nor was George IV's weight.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Considering the overall subject matter, the book is surprisingly dry in its writing style. The anecdotes included provide good starting points for anyone wishing to learn more, and there is a nice bibliography at the end of the book. Still, because it covers such a wide range of historical periods and locales, the author accepted some interesting claims without question, including wildly exaggerated numbers for army sizes and city populations from ancient sources. In other cases, such as the Civil War anecdotes, he overlooks the bloodiest and most gruesome incidents in favor of a very bland overview.
So, while it's an interesting bit of reading, it's only a starting point if you are seriously interested in any historical incident mentioned in the book.

[Chuck Shorter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one was a bit different. I heard reference to this book in a podcast concerning the Persian Empire. Their most extreme method of execution was known as “the torture of the boats”, but I’ll spare you the details. Front to back, chronologically covering from 1000 BC to AD 1900, Historian Jacob Field has accumulated an odd summary assortment of many of the world’s most tragic events, brutal tyrants, deadliest wars and the bloody backdrop of world history.

[Roisín · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this I love gory history. I think it's amazing how cruel human beings can be to each other I mean some of the torture methods they used in history is worthy of cringing. I just hope as the years go by we can try and be more civilized to each other very easy read, well written, you can read it in little chapters sitting on the bus to work, etc

[Joseph Hogan · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was pretty cool to read. I gave it a good rating cause Jacobs a swell guy, and he was a great lecturer. The only issue I have is that it did not go into much detail and did not always bring the scenes he described to life.

But if you want to read something light, with dark contents, and get a bit of history up your sleeve, then it's the perfect book.

[Ming · Rating 2 out of 5]

Starts off interestingly enough, but after a while, most of the stories sort of blend into each other. Ends rather abruptly, without even going into any of the World Wars, or the atrocities committed after that. Could've done with even more bloody detail, methinks.

[Alexus · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was just okay, in my opinion. It has really great and interesting facts, but it seemed to be all over the place. It can get a little heavy if you’re trying to read a good chuck all in one go. It’s better to read a bit here and there for fun facts rather than in depth.

[Jo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Little tidbits about various parts of history, some more gruesome than others. To be honest, there just wasn't enough on each of the stories to whet the appetite for more. Slightly disappointing.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few bloody and odd facts, much the usual gore.

[Bob Cantrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is not much to say, but a quick read of some of history's more evil people. Not much gore, but it should please most readers.

[Kylie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good. Gory, if you can stomach it. Very well researched.

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read but a little all over place. Was really easy to just pick up when I had a spare moment and needed to chill

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

The facts were interesting but ultimately felt unexplored. The format was also really jumbled and unfocused.

[Zenith · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disappointing, poorly structured and poorly researched.