Susan K. Morrissey is Senior Lecturer at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of University College London. She has written Heralds of Revolution: Russian Students and the Mythologies of Radicalism (1998).

Review of the hardback: '… by placing Russian suicide in a pan-European context, she adds to the ongoing discussion of Russia and the west. In the process, she offers more innovative insights into Russia than I have read in years.' Louise McReynolds, Slavic Review

• Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I. Public Order and its Malcontents: 1. Victims of their own will; 2. Virtue and vice in an age of enlightenment; 3. The regulation of suicide; 4. Punishing the body, cleansing the conscience; 5. Policing and paternalism; 6. Arbiters of the self: the suicide note; Part II. Disease of the Century: 7. Sciences of suicide; 8. Crime, disease, sin: disputed judgments; 9. A ray of light in the kingdom of darkness; Part III. Political Theology and Moral Epidemics: 10. Freedom, violence, and the sacred; 11. Children of the twentieth century; Epilogue; Selected bibliography.

Susan K. Morrissey is Senior Lecturer at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of University College London. She has written Heralds of Revolution: Russian Students and the Mythologies of Radicalism (1998).

Review of the hardback: '… by placing Russian suicide in a pan-European context, she adds to the ongoing discussion of Russia and the west. In the process, she offers more innovative insights into Russia than I have read in years.' Louise McReynolds, Slavic Review

• Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I. Public Order and its Malcontents: 1. Victims of their own will; 2. Virtue and vice in an age of enlightenment; 3. The regulation of suicide; 4. Punishing the body, cleansing the conscience; 5. Policing and paternalism; 6. Arbiters of the self: the suicide note; Part II. Disease of the Century: 7. Sciences of suicide; 8. Crime, disease, sin: disputed judgments; 9. A ray of light in the kingdom of darkness; Part III. Political Theology and Moral Epidemics: 10. Freedom, violence, and the sacred; 11. Children of the twentieth century; Epilogue; Selected bibliography.

Susan K. Morrissey is Senior Lecturer at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of University College London. She has written Heralds of Revolution: Russian Students and the Mythologies of Radicalism (1998).

Review of the hardback: '… by placing Russian suicide in a pan-European context, she adds to the ongoing discussion of Russia and the west. In the process, she offers more innovative insights into Russia than I have read in years.' Louise McReynolds, Slavic Review

• Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I. Public Order and its Malcontents: 1. Victims of their own will; 2. Virtue and vice in an age of enlightenment; 3. The regulation of suicide; 4. Punishing the body, cleansing the conscience; 5. Policing and paternalism; 6. Arbiters of the self: the suicide note; Part II. Disease of the Century: 7. Sciences of suicide; 8. Crime, disease, sin: disputed judgments; 9. A ray of light in the kingdom of darkness; Part III. Political Theology and Moral Epidemics: 10. Freedom, violence, and the sacred; 11. Children of the twentieth century; Epilogue; Selected bibliography.