"The Last Gasp" takes us to the dark side of human history in the first full chronicle of the gas chamber in the United States. In page-turning detail, award-winning writer Scott Christianson tells a dreadful story that is full of surprising and provocative new findings. First constructed in Nevada in 1924, the gas chamber, a method of killing sealed off and removed from the sight and hearing of witnesses, was originally touted as a "humane" method of execution. Delving into science, war, industry, medicine, law, and ...
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"The Last Gasp" takes us to the dark side of human history in the first full chronicle of the gas chamber in the United States. In page-turning detail, award-winning writer Scott Christianson tells a dreadful story that is full of surprising and provocative new findings. First constructed in Nevada in 1924, the gas chamber, a method of killing sealed off and removed from the sight and hearing of witnesses, was originally touted as a "humane" method of execution. Delving into science, war, industry, medicine, law, and politics, Christianson overturns this mythology for good. He exposes the sinister links between corporations looking for profit, the military, and the first uses of the gas chamber after World War I. He explores little-known connections between the gas chamber and the eugenics movement. Perhaps most controversially, he has unearthed new evidence about American and German collaboration in the production and lethal use of hydrogen cyanide and about Hitler's adoption of gas chamber technology developed in the United States. More than a book about the death penalty, this compelling history ultimately reveals much about America's values and power structures in the twentieth century.
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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.
Add this copy of The Last Gasp: the Rise and Fall of the American Gas to cart. $7.98, 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.
Add this copy of The Last Gasp: the Rise and Fall of the American Gas to cart. $17.60, very good condition, Sold by ZENO'S rated 3.0 out of 5 stars, ships from San Francisco, CA, 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.
Add this copy of The Last Gasp: the Rise and Fall of the American Gas to cart. $31.20, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, 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. $75.72, new condition, Sold by Booksplease rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Southport, MERSEYSIDE, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2010 by University of California Press.
