“In this brilliant and wide-ranging study, Peter Baldwin deftly demonstrates with a cornucopia of historical facts how in the course of centuries an increasingly law-abiding citizenry became more and more hemmed in by the state's proliferating prohibitions.”
Abram de Swaan, Distinguished Research Professor, University of Amsterdam; author of The Killing Compartments: The Mentality of Mass Murder and In Care of the State: Health Care, Education and Welfare in Europe and the USA in the Modern Era
“Provocative and engaging; an enormously, and refreshingly, long- and wide-ranging historical reflection on crime and its governance over three millennia.”
Markus Dubber, Professor of Law & Criminology and Director, Centre for Ethics, University of Toronto; author of The Police Power: Patriarchy and the Foundations of American Government and The Dual Penal State: The Crisis of Criminal Law in Comparative-Historical Perspective
“Command and Persuade takes readers on a tour across the long sweep of history, a backdrop that highlights the contradictions of modern penal politics. In doing so, Baldwin has done for punishment what Steven Pinker has done for crime.”
Ashley T. Rubin, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa; author of The Deviant Prison: Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary and the Origins of America's Modern Penal System, 1829–1913
"Historians, criminologists, and those with a strong academic interest in policing and criminal justice will learn a great deal from this book."
Library Journal
“[Peter] Baldwin is a historian who is addressing readers for whom libertarianism may well become an emotional as well as a ratiocinative lifeline, and the wealth of scholarship he marshals is extraordinary. Mind you, there's not so much as a hint in the book that its author is a libertarian himself, or even harbors any more than very broadly libertarian sympathies. But his masterful handling of the subject matter, as indeed the translatory impetus he gives to the subject itself, is such that his book would make a libertarian of Pol Pot… The book is a feast.”
Andrei Navrozov, The Fleming Foundation
"Concentrating on the modern state's role in combating crime in the US and Europe, Baldwin masterfully blends history, criminal justice, science, and ideology at a very high level... highly recommended."
Choice
"Baldwin's ambitious all-encompassing view of the emergence of the penal state at the international level is both informative and digestible."
Law and Politics Book Review
"Command and Persuade is compellingly framed with the question – why do we feel more 'beleaguered' by crime even when we 'objectively have the least to fear'?... the book's greatest strength is its impressive scope and broad context. Command and Persuade offers a truly longue durée perspective to the issue of crime as a State responsibility. In doing so, Baldwin gives substantial context to criminological perspectives that are often lacking in the literature. Modern criminology – like the social sciences in general – is often guilty of ignoring the world before the Enlightenment. Baldwin's work will help remedy that. It also brings substantial precision to an often admittedly vague discourse about State power and social control. This is a nuanced picture of multiple government apparatuses gradually developing in response to many impulses and outside stimuli… Command and Persuade is a stimulating book rich with content and a wide scope."
International Sociology
Voted one of the best law books of 2021 by the UK Times
