"Scott Christianson has masterfully chronicled the history of the use of gas to kill human beings. In doing so, he has shown that the Nazi regime drew strength and comfort from the United States' use of the gas chamber beginning nine years before Hitler took power, as well as from the substantial number of gas chamber executions thereafter. While Christianson doesn't claim that the use of the gas chamber here led to the Holocaust, he does highlight ties between the chemical companies who were involved in both gas chambers ...
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"Scott Christianson has masterfully chronicled the history of the use of gas to kill human beings. In doing so, he has shown that the Nazi regime drew strength and comfort from the United States' use of the gas chamber beginning nine years before Hitler took power, as well as from the substantial number of gas chamber executions thereafter. While Christianson doesn't claim that the use of the gas chamber here led to the Holocaust, he does highlight ties between the chemical companies who were involved in both gas chambers in the United States and extermination chambers using gas in the Holocaust. This is a truly thought-provoking and eye-opening book."--Ronald J. Tabak, President, New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty "Scott Christianson has used his extensive experience as an investigative reporter, criminal justice official, historian, and scholar to probe one of the darkest and most neglected regions of American death penalty history--the story of the gas chamber. This book opens new doors and charts new territory in its gripping historical tale documenting the development and use of lethal gas as a method of execution in the United States. As one well acquainted with the realm of capital punishment history and research, Christianson has produced a stellar work that sheds new light on many of the central issues affecting executions."--Dr. Charles S. Lanier, Director of the Capital Punishment Research Initiative (CPRI), Hindelang Criminal Justice Research Center, University at Albany "By tracing the links between American capital punishment, weapons of mass destruction and Nazi gas chambers, "The Last Gasp" gives an added dimension to our thinking about the American death penalty. The author has done a great deal of original research and has produced a very thorough history of an interesting and hitherto little known subject."--David Garland, author of "The Culture of Control and Punishment and Modern Society " "Christianson has done for lethal gas what others have done for hanging, electrocution, and lethal injection: told its history in a compelling manner. He provides an authoritative story of the way lethal gas was appropriated for use as a technology of execution."--Austin Sarat, author of "When the State Kills: Capital Punishment and the American Condition" "In an astonishing, deeply probing and relentless search of the history of the gas chamber, Scott Christianson has made a vital contribution to the understanding that the quest for a 'humane' method of execution must ultimately be fruitless."--Rabbi Leonard I. Beerman, Founding Rabbi of Leo Baeck Temple, Los Angeles and Member, Board of Directors, Death Penalty Focus
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Add this copy of The Last Gasp-the Rise and Fall of the American Gas to cart. $28.87, new condition, Sold by Paperbackshop rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Bensenville, IL, UNITED STATES, published 2011 by University of California Press.
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Add this copy of The Last Gasp: the Rise and Fall of the American Gas to cart. $5.94, very good condition, Sold by Midtown Scholar Bookstore rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Harrisburg, PA, UNITED STATES, published 2010 by University of California Press.
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Add this copy of The Last Gasp: the Rise and Fall of the American Gas to cart. $12.37, very good condition, Sold by Midtown Scholar Bookstore rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Harrisburg, PA, UNITED STATES, published 2010 by University of California Press.
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Berkeley. 2010. University of California Press. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 9780520255623. 325 pages. hardcover. Cover design by Sandy Drooker. keywords: United States History Military History Politics Crime Sociology. FROM THE PUBLISHER-Prize-winning, anti-death penalty author Scott Christianson charts the first murky history of the use of the gas chamber in the US and exposes some shocking facts. Execution by gas was really an American invention as the chemical warfare industry looked to other uses for its technology after WWI. The world's first gas execution was of a Chinese immigrant in Nevada in the 1920s. American Progressives and Eugenecists supported it, and by 1935, America's Nobel Prize-winning physician Dr. Alexis Carrel of the Rockefeller Institute, was calling for criminals and the mentally ill to be, 'disposed of in small euthanasia institutions supplied with proper gases. ' US companies collaborated with Germany in developing the gas chamber, and in developing and exporting gas for it in the 1930s. Use spread through Colorado, Arizona, Missouri, Wyoming, Oregon and California in the 1930s, Mississippi in 1947, and Maryland and New Mexico in the 1950s. The Last Gasp explores the public image of gas executions after 1945, Hollywood portrayals, the national moratorium against the death penalty that started in the early 1960s, and legal reverses in the 1990s. Today five states, including California, which has carried out the most gas executions of any state, retain the gas chamber as a possible execution method. inventory #37727.
