Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction PART ONE THE RISE OF THE LETHAL CHAMBER 1. Envisioning the Lethal Chamber 2. Fashioning a Frightful Weapon of War 3. Devising "Constructive Peacetime Uses" 4. Staging the World's First Gas Execution 5. "Like Watering Flowers" 6. Pillar of Respectability 7. The Rising Storm 8. Adapted for Genocide PART TWO THE FALL OF THE GAS CHAMBER 9. Clouds of Abolition 10. The Battle over Capital Punishment 11 "Cruel and Unusual Punishment"? 12. The Last Gasp Appendix 1: Earl C. Liston's Patent Application Appendix 2: Persons Executed by Lethal Gas in the United States, by State, 1924--1999 Notes Select Bibliography Index

About the Author

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.

Reviews

"Christianson makes a chilling argument for its [the gas chamber's]-and the death penalty's-abolition." STARRED REVIEW Publishers Weekly "An excellent history." -- Brian Bethune Maclean's "Christianson has written the definitive (actually, the only) history of the gas chamber. It is a history so complicated and convoluted that it reads almost like something out of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow." -- Ben Pesta California Lawyer "First full-scale history of gas chamber connects murky (and sure-to-be controversial) dots, including Hitler's adoption of American technology and joint American-German research and development." -- Gene Santoro American History "This sobering work is recommended to all readers interested in exploring the topic." -- Stephen L. Hupp Library Journal "Scholarly, original, and readable ... Recommended." -- R. D. McCrie Choice