For millennia mankind has devised ingenious & diabolical means of inflicting pain on fellow human beings. This deplorable but seemingly universal trait has eaten away at mankinds very claim to civilisation. The Big Book of Pain is an exploration of the systematic use throughout the ages of various means of punishment torture coercion & torment; which takes the reader into the Ancient Roman Coliseum the medieval dungeon the Inquisitional interrogation the auto-da-fe the witch-trial & the most horrid of prisons. It is a shocking & compelling study of the shameful methods & motives of the torturer & the executioner & of the heinous duty they have performed through the ages. Since the earliest times it is an acknowledged fact that anyone can be made to confess to anything under torture making such confessions inadmissible. The Big Book of Pain questions why we have continued such practices for so long.