Five important novels--McTeague, An American Tragedy, Native Son, In Cold Blood and The Executioner's Song--bring readers a vivid awareness of America's punitive codes. Each details the story of a life that leads to the gallows. Sentenced to Death places these works against the historical background of crime and capital punishment in America, a nation where public discourse on crime is dominated by images of the electric chair and the gas chamber, by maximum security prisons, by hardened convicts out on parole. Such images, in turn mirror and shape the exercise of punitive power.
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