The Last Gasp

"Scott Christianson has masterfully chronicled the history of the use of gas to kill human beings. In doings so, he has shown that the Nazi regime drew strength and comfort from the use of the gas chamber in the United States, which began nine years before Hitler took power, as well as from the substantial number of U.S. gas chamber executions thereafter. Although Christianson doesn't claim that the use of the gas chamber here led to the Holocaust, he does highlight ties between the chemical companies that were involved in the development and manufacture of gas chambers in the United States and extermination chambers using gas during 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. 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, 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: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society and Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory

"Scott 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

The Last Gasp Takes us to the dark side of human history 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 the subjects of science, war, industry, medicine, law, and politics, Christianson overturns this mythology for good. He exposes the sinister links between corporations looking for profit and the military, as well as 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.

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.