Book Review-Sleepless Souls: Suicide in Early Modern England by M MacDonald & T R Murphy

This book review provides an overview of the book & notes that in writing a social & cultural history of suicide in early modern England, it not only documents the incidence of self-destruction but provides both a survey & explanation of the changing attitudes toward suicide. It analyzes the shift in enforcement of the legal penalties against self-murder ove r the course of the 16th & early 17th centuries & undertakes to unravel the tangled strands of values, beliefs, & emotional associations.