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| The Last Gasp: The Rise and Fall of the American Gas Chamber
ISBN: 9780520945616
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / University of California Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Gas chambers -- United States -- History; Capital punishment -- United States -- History -- 20th century;
Investigative journalist Christianson, author of the award-winning With Liberty for Some, charts the 75-year history of gas chamber execution as well as its intersection with eugenics, the Holocaust, and America's ongoing capital punishment debate. Christianson is clear that his focus is the United States, underscoring that the chamber's "operation can hardly be described as painless or kind." After the Germans launched the first gas attack during WWI, American scientists and chemical companies-particularly DuPont, which had ties to the German manufacturers that later supplied concentration camps-scrambled to produce their own lethal concoctions. From their earliest incarnations, gas chambers employed various forms of hydrogen cyanide (HCN) pumped into a sealed room where the condemned was strapped to a chair. Despite being developed as a swifter and more painless alternative to death than hanging or electrocution, Christianson describes in graphic detail the numerous botched executions during which death took over 10 agonizing minutes. Though the gas chamber hasn't been used in America since 1999, Christianson makes a chilling argument for its-and the death penalty's-abolition. 8 b&w photos. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Christianson Scott :
Scott Christianson is a writer, investigative reporter, and historian. He is the author of several acclaimed books, including With Liberty for Some: 500 Years of Imprisonment in America , winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award Distinguished Honors and a Choice Outstanding Book Award. His book Condemned: Inside the Sing Sing Death House was the subject of feature stories in the Village Voice, the New York Times, The Nation, and on the History Channel. |
