Rachel McCarthy James’ book Whack Job traces the history of axe murder from prehistory to the present

While Lawrence writer Rachel McCarthy James co-wrote 2017’s true crime book—The Man from the Train: The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer, with her father, Bill James—her latest, Whack Job: A History of Axe Murder, is all her.

It’s “the story of the axe, first as a convenient danger and then an anachronism, as told through the murders it has been employed in throughout history,” and covers a dizzying swathe of history.

Like a bloody version of Bill Bryson’s At Home: A Short History of Private Life or Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat by Bee Wilson filtered through the vibrant readability of Mary Roach, James’ Whack Job is a book which you’ll find utterly un-putdown-able.

We sat down with Rachel McCarthy James for some iced coffee at Lawrence’s La Prima Tazza to discuss how Whack Job came to be.

The Pitch: You alluded to working on this for five or six years.

Rachel McCarthy James: Longer, actually. I started talking to my agent about it in 2018. I pitched a piece to Lyz Lenz when she was at the Rumpus back in 2017 about the phrase “axe murderer” and why it’s a phrase, basically. Then it got to about 10,000 words, and I was like, “This isn’t a feature. This is a book.”

I’d been looking around for my next book idea and I was like, “All right, I think this is it.” I started looking for a history of the axe that was fairly incisive and went back to its origins and I couldn’t find it and I was like, “Can’t find the book I’m trying to read? Probably should write it,” especially since it came from The Man from the Train.

Were there books you looked to in the process of writing Whack Job?

You’ll find books that are Woodsman’s Companions. There’s a book by a guy named Dudley Cook [The Ax Book: The Lore and Science of the Woodcutter] that’s got really charming little illustrations he did himself and takes you really through how to use an axe, how not to chop off your own foot, and takes you a little bit through the history of the axe, especially as it pertains to America. Then you’ll have really deep histories–a 200 page monograph on all of the Egyptian axes that we’ve ever found in history. You’ll find a lot of, like, “Here’s a piece about flint axes that’s really in depth, but only goes into this one part of Africa.” I wanted something that went through all of that and presented it in a fun and accessible way.

Given that there are so many stories in this book, which spans much of human civilization, was there a story that you got to a point with where you were just, “I really want to include this,” but it’s like, a page?

Yes, exactly. Sometimes, that was kind of an asset. With the Herodotus story, it’s really just two lines in Herodotus, but there are a lot of different ways you can go with it. You can go into the backstory of it with his family and also use that as a launching point to explore the different symbolic representations that that the axe had in Greece and Rome, which are obviously very powerful there, throughout history.

There was a story in the French and Indian War about a colonial Pennsylvania town that raided and killed the last of an Indian native tribe. I found it fascinating and emblematic of that history, but ultimately, the axe was just one of the tools. That’s fine for some of these stories, but for this, it didn’t give enough insight into where the axe was at that point in its history as a tool.

There was a lot of stuff. “Deuteronomy 19:5” was actually the first sample chapter I wrote.

The part where it’s about if two men go into a forest together and the ax head flies off and hits the other and the head. I ended up writing that as my first sample chapter, but then, once we got to it, it was too academic. There wasn’t a specific crime associated with it, so we ended up going with the Betty [Gore] and Candy [Montgomery] chapter instead, which was very interesting insight into the axe and pop culture actually, because I wrote that chapter in spring 2020, and then I sold the book, was starting to write it, and two different series got announced about it his case I thought was completely forgotten.

That was kind of funny. I felt possessive about it in a way, but also I was like, “All right, well, this shows I’m onto something, at least.”

You do touch on the popular culture aspect here and there. I mean, you can’t write a book about the history of axe murder without talking about Lizzie Borden, and you can’t talk about the history of the axe without the George Washington “I cannot tell a lie” story, but did you consider like pop culture being more of the book?

I think I did a little bit more in the earliest iterations of it. The Shining was a big part of the sample chapter, but I always wanted to explore the deeper cultural roots and go way back and look at how deep these associations go with state violence, war–with execution, especially because that’s a big part of the menace behind it.

What were the challenges of doing all of this research during the pandemic when you can’t go anywhere?

It definitely took more time than I would’ve liked. I would’ve liked to have had this out a couple of years earlier. It was funny because in the first few chapters, I would spend six months, nine months sometimes, just on trying to figure out really ancient history. Neanderthals and things like trying to figure out where we stood in that was really complicated. Chinese history, Greek history, Egyptian history, Viking history–it’s so dense and I really had to find my way through it and try to get a grounding.

Those things took months and months and months and months and then, once I got to the American chapters, I felt like I had a much stronger footing and I was able to go through those much faster. Also as you get closer and closer to the present, the more sources there are about it. Once you get closer and closer to the present, the better chronicled these are and the easier it is to make a beginning, middle, and end.

Whereas with Stesagoras, there’s this Croesus backstory and then something happens with Stesagoras and then he’s killed. There’s a lot you’ve gotta fill in there. There’s a lot of background you’ve gotta fill in and just try and build that from general knowledge of the society they were living in, especially with the first chapter. We literally know nothing about it. Literally just a skull. So the closer I got to the present, definitely the more details I had to work with and that made it much easier to get through it more quickly.

The chapter which stood out most prominently to me was the George Washington chapter because, for as much as you learn in American history classes about him and his life, really delving into the story of what essentially could have ended his career really offers the reader a glimpse at the first president in a way which really isn’t covered in the usual hagiography.

Compared with someone like Thomas Jefferson, who could really be evil, I think he did have some actual values and principles. But everyone is 22 sometimes, which reminds me of the kids at DOGE, honestly–a little bit like failing upward and getting into this position where there’s screwing up and yet also bettering their careers. I also think that one is so interesting because I know a lot of these are kind of between war and murder, whereas this is kind of an in-between phase.

It’s definitely during an armed conflict and it’s partially revenge as well, but it’s also in self-defense in a way. So I think Tanacharison’s story is really interesting and gets at that dividing line between personally motivated murder, between revenge and between self-defense, which I think is a line that you don’t see a lot.

I think the Stesagoras has a little bit of relevance, too, ’cause when I was writing it, I wasn’t thinking that Croesus is basically Elon Musk. It gives me a little bit of hope that you see this rich guy trying to wipe these people out and then they find a way to claw back their power and use it against the same person in the same way. So I think that’s really fascinating.

Getting to know history in a different way and see it through a different vantage point than I don’t think I would’ve been able to if I hadn’t written this book, that’s been really a gift to me in a lot of ways. There are so many fun, unexpected connections. [My husband] Jason is a big parrothead, Jimmy Buffett fan, and he was reading the chapter about Stesagoras. There’s that little part where I talk about how the dolphin is bringing him and he’s like, “Oh, that’s the Jolly Mon from Jimmy Buffet lore,” and I was like, “I don’t think everybody’s ever made that connection, ever.”

Funny how people have these different connections and reactions to it.

Rachel McCarthy James’ Whack Job: A History of Axe Murder is out Tuesday, May 13, from St. Martin’s Press. There’s a release party that night at the Raven Bookstore in Lawrence. Details on that here and you can find all of the dates for her book tour on Instagram @rmccarthyjames.