Let's say you're married to Henry VIII but he's sick of you, so you're about to be killed by an executioner. Might one thing on your mind — possibly the first thing — be, "Exactly how sharp is that axe?"

Rachel McCarthy James is way ahead of you in her "Whack Job: A History of Axe Murder." In a chapter about the many people Henry put to death, including poor Catherine Howard (of whom James notes that "she belonged in a teen drama, planning outrageously glamorous outfits and plotting secret hookups"), James pauses to consider that very topic.

"The doomed men and women knew that the man holding the axe was responsible for the accuracy and sharpness of the axe, and they were doing a kindness to the person whom they were beheading by doing their work with as much brutal efficiency as they could muster," writes James. (If you are touchy about gruesome details, which I suppose a person reading a book about axe murders is unlikely to be, you'll want to skip the part about Oliver Cromwell's beheading. Let's just say the axe was a bit dull.)

"Whack Job" is a lively history, in the spirit of Mary Roach's science-but-make-it-sarcastic-and-fun books such as "Gulp" and "Stiff." Although at least one person gets butchered in each chapter, climaxing with the axe murderer's axe murderer Lizzie Borden, the best parts of James' book are when she has fun with the topic, delighting in the quirks of a weapon that you might think has gone out of style until you get to the last couple of chapters, which are alarmingly recent. The book's first chapter covers the killing of a Neanderthal-ish man but the final chapter describes events from 2019. (The axe murder of Frank Lloyd Wright's mistress and six others at Spring Green, Wis. also makes the, um, cut.)

There's a true crime element to "Whack Job" but it's really a book of popular history, both of the development of the axe from 430,000 B.C., when it looked more like a large arrowhead, to the gleaming murder weapons we now purchase at our neighborhood Home Depot. Interstitial chapters, illustrated with drawings, trace the axe's development (photos would have been a better choice, since that 430,000 B.C. axe looks like a buffalo chip, although I appreciated the decision not to include photos when the Borden chapter rolled around).

The book is also a social history, and James pays careful attention to the economic and other factors that have brought axes in and out of favor, including "the urgency of war, the dehumanization of slavery, the entitlement of royalty, the chaos of lunacy." The Wright chapter is especially strong on how feminism and poverty played into the eventual crimes. And, while James has doubts about whether Lizzie Borden killed her parents, there's a reason the frustrated young woman might have picked up an axe: They're cheap, easy to use and her house had a bunch of 'em.

Whack Job

There are some frustrating errors in the book, such as a sentence that claims Spring Green's population is less than a thousand and also more than a thousand (the latter is correct). But James' thoughtful, good-humored approach accumulates power as you read "Whack Job," a book that knows disarming readers with a joke is a great way to get us ready to think.

Whack Job: A History of Axe Murder

By: Rachel McCarthy James.

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 258 pages.