The subject for today's "Behind the Book" conversation is flogging. Rather than showing you a depiction of someone having their back flayed with a whip, I instead of chosen to show you the smiling visage of today's guest, Don Hagist. You may thank me.

But, as Don and I discuss, it's awfully hard to find an image of a flogging from the era of the American Revolution, roughly 1770 through 1793. Why might that be? And is flogging what we think it was? Was being sentence to 500 lashes–as Daniel Morgan was in 1755–more or less a death sentence? How often were men flogged? Could they ever be trusted again? And what exactly were they flogged with? And where?

These and numerous other questions are answered by Don, who is I think one of the foremost experts on the life of the British soldier during the American Revolution. Don is an engineering consultant who in his spare time somehow manages to be Managing Editor of the Journal of the American Revolution, and an independent historian. His books include The Revolution's Last Men: the Soldiers Behind the Photographs (Westholme Publishing, 2015), British Soldiers, American War (Westholme Publishing, 2012), and A British Soldier’s Story: Roger Lamb’s Narrative of the American Revolution (Ballindalloch Press, 2004).