Customer Reviews

The Last Gasp: The Rise and Fall of the American Gas Chamber

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In this great work, Scott Christianson carefully, and with full scholarship, presents brilliant narratives detailing the sad history of the gas chamber, as well as the death penalty in America.

As in all his previous works, Scott Christianson has brought humanity and understanding to an otherwise horrific reality. Remaining untouched is not an option for anyone reading this great work.

Blending facts and anecdotal situations, what emerges is an understated passion that is the mark of a master historian and storyteller, both rare, but when blended together, a remarkable accomplishment.

I found this book to be okay, but not one that I would want to keep in my library. The actual text of the book is 230 pages with another ninety pages of notes and index in addition to diagrams of a gas chamber with the United States Patent Office and a complete listing (sixteen pages) of every individual ever executed in a gas chamber in the United States. The notes and index is fine, but I feel the rest is all added as filler for the book.

You will also read of the execution of Jews in Nazi Germany, much of which has been written in other books. I found an error on pages 180 and 181 where the name of Bonnie Brown Heady is listed as "Headley". Heady, along with Carl Austin Hall, went to the gas chamber in Jefferson City, Missouri, in 1953 for the murder of Bobby Greenlease. Heady's name is also listed as "Headley" in the index. In parts of the book I felt the author got overly technical in explaining to a lay audience the chemical mixture used in various executions.

The book does contain some interesting information regarding the death penalty in the United States. The gas chamber began to be used because it was believed to be a more humane method of execution instead of hanging, electrocution, or firing squad. When this proved to be a fallacy use of the gas chamber gradually diminished. Author Scott Christianson provides examples of several botched executions in addition to mentioning the classic 1958 movie "I Want to Live" starring Susan Hayward for her memorable portrayal of Barbara Graham who met death in San Quentin's gas chamber. The memorable case of Caryl Chessman is mentioned as well. In 1960 after several years of appeals Chessman also went to San Quentin's death house even though he hadn't murdered anyone. When the death penalty was abolished in the United States during the 1970s Governor Ronald Reagan of California wondered if putting criminals to death with a shot as was done with animals might be a more humane method of execution. As I've said the book contains some interesting stories regarding the history of the gas chamber, but I feel too much time was spent on Nazi Germany in addition to getting technical with chemistry and filler pages to round out the book.

Overall, the book was interesting and readable. It presented a general overview of the history of the gas chamber as interpreted by the author. Regrettably, he lets his own bias overcome any honest intellectual debate on the subject.
He attempts to equate the use of the gas chamber on convicted criminals to the Nazi's gassing of Jews in Europe during WWII.
Somewhat disingenuously he states his case linking the gassing of convicted criminals to that of the Jews and then quietly points out that no historical record exists linking German thought and action to support his thesis. He discusses eugenics in detail, but then quietly admits no "cleansing" executions occured in the US gas chambers.
To call him a historian is probably an exaggeration. To call him an advocate of his story is probably appropriate. If a reader approaches the book understanding that it is fine. If a reader expects an honest discussion and representation of the facts, he will be dissappointed.
It is a pity that he worries about the few minutes of pain and stress possibly felt by the criminal, but seems to give no thought to the pain they caused their victims.

"The earliest gas chamber for execution purposes was constructed in the Nevada State Penitentiary at Carson City and first employed on February 8, 1924 . . . the first execution by gas arose as a byproduct of chemical warfare research conducted by the U. S. Army's Chemical Warfare Service and the chemical industry during the First World War . . ."

From the advantage of current access to court cases and other documents, Scott Christianson has compiled a weighty tome devoted to the history of the Gas Chamber. The book is heavily referenced and authoritative. Christiansons' background as an investigative reporter and historian uniquely qualifies him to take on this subject. Personal and political ties influenced many decisions in regard to the development and use of deadly chemicals. In his detailed account, names are named and you will recognize them.

In the early 1900s, racism was pervasive. Immigrants were viewed with suspicion. Many prominent persons believed the defective and unfit did not deserve to live and certainly not to reproduce.

"If I had my way, I would build a lethal chamber as big as the Crystal Palace, with a military band playing softly, and a Cinematograph working brightly, and then I'd go out in back streets and main streets and bring them all in, all the sick . . . the maimed; I would lead them gently, and they would smile a weary thanks."
---D. H. Lawrence.

German troops introduced chemical warfare in 1915. It had the advantage of rendering a battlefield uninhabitable, but the greatest impact was psychological. Before WWI the use of gases was considered dishonorable under the rules of warfare, but after the German's use of it the Allies decided that "there was no choice on their part and that they had to retaliate in like manner." In secret, America's chemists rushed to catch up to Germany's chemical development. They tested more than 1600 compounds on mice, rats, dogs, and other animals, as well as on American soldiers.

After the war, the powerful chemical lobby wanted to keep the gas technology they had developed, but turn it into "constructive peacetime uses." Scientists were testing poisons to fight fires, make dyes, exterminate insects and animals, make fertilizers, to fumigate ships in all of America's ports, and to fumigate fruits and other foods. It was used in the miningindustry to separate silver, gold, copper, lead, and other ores. Claims were even made that poison gases could rid the world of cancer and other dreaded diseases. In 1921 Nevada enacted the Humane Execution Law and became the first state in the world to require the administration of lethal gas to legally end human life. The news of the first two executions flashed around the world. Other states followed Nevada's lead. But in harmony with the eugenics of the time, it was often the poor, the mentally handicapped, and minorities who were killed.

"Hitler's concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed, so he claims, to his studies or English and United States history."

I was amazed at the degree that American financiers bankrolled fascist regimes in WWII, as well as the secret alliances of prominent men that were hidden through a web of trade agreements. They are named in this book and referenced, and I congratulate Christianson for his thoroughness in following the paper trail.

At the advent of America's entry into WWII many feared Germany's use of chemical warfare again. Winston Churchill stated, "The only reason they have not used it against us is that they fear the retaliation."

"Hitler used the press of war to secretly authorize a euthanasia program that at first was ostensibly limited to eliminating an incurable sick patient . . . "

Hitler emptied the mental hospitals in his `mercy killings', and upon public outcry, the euthanasia action secretly shifted to concentration camps. Christianson lists these camps and their methods in stark detail.

"The word went out . . . about the immense scope of the genocide. Yet nobody noted that it been the United States Army and American scientists, industrialist and politicians who had invented the gas chamber in the first place . . . Nobody stated the lamentable fact that the radical eugenicists and racial supremacists seemed to have gotten what they had wished for."

"Pursuing this haunted path has brought great sadness; my battered heart grieves in the memory of those lost." ----author Scott Christianson

This book is fascinating yet brutal. He spares no detail in the descriptions of just how these chemicals work, and his history proceeds seamlessly from early development to current uses of these poisons. He combines history and science, as well as legal reasoning with humanitarian concerns. It's not a happy read, but one that reveals a relatively unknown part of modern history.

This is a fascinating, extensively researched, and extremely interesting work. As in his other fine books, Mr. Christianson does not take any political position or attempt use his book as a soapbox from which to moralize. Rather, he presents the facts clearly and coherently, and allows the reader to reach his or her own conclusions.

I found the most shocking part of the book to be the discussion of how the close collaboration between German science and American business in the early 20th century resulted in the widespread availability of hydrogen cyanide, and how the fruits of their labor were corrupted by the Nazi regime. What had originally been developed as an inexpensive and efficient fumigant that would prevent the spread of disease by vermin, and therefore would benefit mankind, ironically was turned into a tool for the industrialized murder of millions of innocent human beings.

This was a book that needed to be written. And Mr. Christianson, with his fine track record of scholarship, fairness, and readability in the area of American crime and punishment, was exactly the right author to write it. There had been far too little published work regarding this subject (save for a excellent law review studies by such renowned experts as Professor Deborah Denno). No previous work has delved into this subject with the depth, breadth and clarity of The Last Gasp.

Kudos and thanks to Mr. Christianson! This book will find a proud place in my personal library next to Condemned, Notorious Prisons, Innocent!, and With Liberty for Some.

The Last Gap is a very useful book, but it is definitely NOT a great book. Chapter 8 -- "Adapted for Genocide" -- is a thorough endorsement of the holocaust propaganda with references to the works of Mazal and Arad, even Goldhagen, and many of the well-known Jewish pseudo-scholars. That chapter is bad but still useful.

In that chapter 8 on page 159, we even have the following gem:

"Jan Karski, a Polish resistance fighter who escaped . . . later got to view several American aerial reconnaissance photos showing Auschwitz. 'It was the saddest thing,' he later bitterly recalled. 'With a magnifying glass we could actually read the names and numbers of the Hungarian Jews standing on line waiting to be gassed ...' "

As someone who has spent much time examining those aerial recon photos, I know that Karski lied if he ever said anything like that. Christianson is quite gullible on that subject. From the aerial photos one cannot even tell the sex of the moving dots on the ground, let alone their ethnicity or tattoo number, or even whether they had tattoos. If Christianson or Ms. Goodwin or anyone else thinks I am wrong--let them produce the photos with the numbers.

Friedrich Paul Berg