From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. 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)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"Christianson makes a chilling argument for its [the gas chamber's]--and the death penalty's--abolition." STARRED REVIEW--_Publishers Weekly_

"This sobering work is recommended to all readers interested in exploring the topic."--_Library Journal_

"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."--_American History_

"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."--_California Lawyer_