The inside story of sanctioned murder in America as seen by the men who design the machinery of execution and by those who are to be executed. For many months Steven Trombley immersed himself in the community of the condemned, the world most people prefer to ignore. This book is based on more than 400 hours of interviews with executioners, with the inventor of the machines of execution, with the condemned themselves, and an account of the author's own experience as witness to two executions. This is the journey into the death chambers of the 37 states of the US that still have them as well as a condemnation of a system that so easily dehumanizes those who are charged with carrying out the will of the people.