This chapter defines the terminological differences between the terms ‘fire-setting’, ‘arson’ and ‘pyromania’, including their place in current diagnostic manuals. An epidemiological perspective on fire-setting in those with mental disorder as well as classification systems and theories of fire-setting with prevailing conceptual models of fire-setting and mental disorder is described. Current approaches in the risk assessment of fire-setting and psychological and pharmacological interventions in fire-setting are discussed. Finally, a care pathway to guide clinical and risk assessment of the patient with fire-setting as a feature of their behaviour or history is suggested.

Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald was every 5′3 ½″ a lady, but she outdrank men from Montgomery to Manhattan to Marseilles. Her short stories were so good that, sometimes, they appeared under her husband Scott's name. She was a gifted painter whose work was mostly bought out of pity, lost forever because it was unsigned and often given away, and burned by a protective, possibly jealous sister. She was a gifted dancer who began in earnest too late and never got a real chance. She was an early feminist heroine. She has inspired classic fantasy-action video games, lines of clothing, agenda-driven biographies, and novels from the beautiful to the damnable. She is catnip to movies and television series and is the current subject of two major biopics, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Scarlett Johansson. The legends of Zelda go on and on, from shortly after her birth in 1900 to the present day, and surely beyond. Yet the truths of Zelda, as we can find them, are much finer and more meaningful than all the legends they still beget. It is time to realize how much they can round out, and also increase, the legend.

Although the execution crowd is a common mind’s-eye image of Victorian England, we still have much to learn or to reconsider about nineteenth-century executions. The Whig governments of the 1830s are rightly seen as far more restrained in using the gallows than their Tory predecessors, but they in fact sustained a surprisingly vigorous, residual “Bloody Code” – centred on violent crimes against property – until 1837. The prevailing conviction amongst historians that the removal of executions within prison walls in 1868 averted a move towards the complete abolition of execution is not supported by the actual character of the attempts to achieve this in parliament. The change of 1868 really did stem from concerns about the execution crowd and the complicity of urbane elites in their extent. To an under-appreciated degree, however, journalists kept the work of the gallows before the public eye through the turn of the twentieth century.

This chapter centers on the actions of Rose Butler, a teenaged term slave in New York. Rose and her accomplices set her owners’ home on fire in 1818 to avenge her mistress’s poor treatment.

Displacement and genocide, rather than fully eliminating the Haitian presence in Dominican territory, fomented new forms of contestation, tension, and conflict. Refugees’ prolonged patterns of contestation and resistance contributed to tense relations along the border throughout the 1940s. This chapter details ethnic Haitians’ methods of irregular resistance, which included secret farms, livestock-theft, the right of return, and in some rare cases, arson and vandalism. These incidents provide a window into some refugees’ political consciousness surrounding genocide, displacement, lost citizenship, and lost homeland. The chapter argues that ethnic Haitians challenged Trujillo’s territorial sovereignty and Dominicanization through land contestation, arson, and clandestine farming. Of these phenomena, clandestine farming was the most enduring and widespread form of resistance because it was the least dangerous and also functioned as a desperate survival strategy. The genocide continued throughout the 1940s in the form of isolated killings by which Trujillo’s government enforced the parallel policies of a closed border and Dominicanization. This chapter considers the ways in which desperate, irregular social contestation through nighttime farming and cross-border livestock-theft represented disturbing, latter-day echoes of colonial marronage.

People are susceptible to boredom and seek an optimal level of arousal. Psychopathic individuals appear to be low on arousal, and they try to elevate this by seeking novelty and taking risks. Ways to achieve the optimal level by sensation-seeking include transgressions such as violence, arson and theft. These can have sexual associations and are sometimes accompanied by masturbation. Dopamine activation is at the basis of elevations in arousal. Serial lust killers commonly have a history of committing non-sexual crimes and arson. The internal organs of the body are under the control of the autonomic nervous system, high arousal being associated with dominance of the sympathetic branch and low arousal with the parasympathetic branch. Arousal is largely non-specific, and it takes a positive or negative value according to context. Switches can be made from negative to positive, which appears to lie at the basis of some lust killing.

Recent literature has contributed to a greater understanding of the characteristics, motives, risk factors and treatment targets of individuals with firesetting histories. The current chapter will discuss the latest theoretical and empirical literature on firesetting, and will provide an overview of findings in relation to the general characteristics of firesetters, theories of firesetting, particular characteristics associated with juvenile and female firesetting, as well as risk assessment and management. The chapter will conclude with discussion of two treatment programs that have been developed to address the specific etiological pathways believed to be associated with firesetting, and provide some tentative evidence supporting their effectiveness.

This chapter shows how the loosely regulated night of the eighteenth century, that had accommodated orthodox and antinomian ritual, order, and its transgression, gradually turned into a battleground between the palace elite and the janissaries, the unofficial rulers of the night. When at conflict with the palace, the janissaries used the night not only for licentious pleasures and business, but also for conspiracy and sabotage, as a crucial facet in their “protocols of rebellion.” Once activated, the janissaries’ networks would organize quickly under the cover of darkness and march out of the shadows to confront the sultan in broad daylight. Ottoman sultans, on their part, occasionally tried to dislodge these networks, significantly in this context, by eradicating the nightlife scene which they considered the breeding ground of janissary revolts. These efforts, however, were thwarted by the dependency of the authorities on, and the ambivalence toward these very networks and activities. The drama is narrated below in three acts of major upheavals: the 1730 rebellion, the nizam-i cedid reforms and the 1807 uprising that undid them, and the destruction of the janissaries in 1826, which opened the way to significant changes in Ottoman nocturnal realities.

As William H. Williams’ case coursed through Louisiana’s courts, the state profited from the labor of the convict slaves Williams transported to Louisiana. In 1845, ten of the enslaved felons entered the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Baton Rouge. This chapter chronicles conditions inside the penitentiary, the work the slaves performed, and the difficulties the state confronted in prison management. It also explains how Louisiana law disposed of the children born to enslaved female convicts.

The epilogue looks in several directions at the crossroads of nuclear power to consider the future of Atomic Junction and the place of afrofuturism around nuclear power. It begins with conversations with students at the School of Nuclear and Allied Sciences who have difficulty getting jobs after their degrees. In one direction, nuclear power is on a path to success with plans to import large power reactors in coming years. In another direction, nuclear power is on a rocky road given challenges managing land disputes, equipment costs, earthquake faults and even basic regulation of petrol stations. While there are now many atomic physicists in Ghana, the dream for scientific equity has not been fully realized as the plight of families in Haatso and Kwabenya revealed.