"These essays...show us the human and inhuman realities of capital punishment through the eyes of the condemned and those who work with them. By focusing on those awaiting death, they present the awful truth behind the statistics in concrete, personal terms." --William J. Bowers, author of Legal Homicide Between 1930 and 1967, there were 3,859 executions carried out under state and civil authority in the United States. Since the ten-year moratorium on capital punishment ended in 1977, more than one hundred prisoners have been executed. There are more than two thousand men and women now living on death row awaiting their executions. Facing the Death Penalty offers an in-depth examination of what life under a sentence of death is like for condemned inmates and their families, how and why various professionals assist them in their struggle for life, and what these personal experiences with capital punishment tell us about the wisdom of this penal policy. The contributors include historians, attorneys, sociologists, anthropologists, criminologists, a minister, a philosopher, and three prisoners. One of the prisoner-contributors is Willie Jasper Darden, Jr., whose case and recent execution after fourteen years on death row drew international attention. The inter-disciplinary perspectives offered in this book will not solve the death penalty debate, but they offer important and unique insights on the full effects of American capital punishment provisions. While the book does not set out to generate sympathy for those convicted of horrible crimes, taken together, the essays build a case for abolition of the death penalty. "This work stands with the best of what's been written. It represents the best of those who have seen the worst." --Colman McCarthy, The Washington Post Book World

In the popular consciousness, manipulative speech pervades politicized discourse, and the eloquence of politicians is seen as invariably rooted in cunning and prevarication. Rhetorical flourishes are thus judged corruptive of the substance of political discourse because they lead to distortion and confusion. Yet the papers in Facing the Monarch suggest that separating style from content is practically impossible. Focused on the era between the Spring and Autumn period and the later Han dynasty, this volume examines the dynamic between early Chinese ministers and monarchs at a time when ministers employed manifold innovative rhetorical tactics. The contributors analyze discrete excerpts from classical Chinese works and explore topics of censorship, irony, and dissidence highly relevant for a climate in which ruse and misinformation were the norm. What emerges are original and illuminating perspectives on how the early Chinese political circumstance shaped and phrased—and prohibited—modes of expression.

Before the Second World War, the states of Washington and Oregon were thinly populated economic backwaters of the United States. Even the major cities of Portland and Seattle were dependent on agricultural industries, especially timber, for their economic health. That all changed during World War II and the Cold War.

By the dawn of the twenty-first century, the Pacific Northwest boasted a more diversified economy. Beer, tourism, and high tech moved in alongside timber and wheat as the region’s mainstay industries. In Washington, especially, a Cold War–driven military and national security state set up shop as an economic behemoth even as debates over the costs and consequences of the new Atomic Age raged.

Facing the World highlights these changes, as well as the politicians, business leaders, and ordinary people who helped bring them about. At the center of the story, Senators Henry Jackson, Wayne Morse, Slade Gorton, and Mark Hatfield; Congressman Tom Foley; and Governor Vic Atiyeh worked diligently for a generation to transform the region from insular and backward to cosmopolitan and forward-looking. Aligning the region with national security and international trade policies, these politicians made the Pacific Northwest economy what it is today.

Through extensive research in congressional and federal archives, historian Christopher P. Foss vividly brings to life the discussions, conflicts, and controversies that shaped this political era. Though it wasn’t perfect, its fading legacy of leadership is a lesson for our own time. Facing the World will prove a valuable resource to historians, political scientists, and civic-minded residents of the Pacific Northwest.