Torture: A Collection. Edited by Sanford Levinson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 328p. $29.95.

Seventeen short essays, together with a very detailed Israeli Supreme Court judgment (1999), provide useful discussions of a timely and important subject. Considerable disagreement occurs, and sometimes participants address each other in strong language. Thus, when Ariel Dorfman pleads for “humanity to say no to torture under any circumstance” (p. 17), Judge Richard Posner responds that the statement “is not only overwrought in tone but irresponsible in content” (p. 295).