A Descending Spiral: Exposing the Death Penalty in 12 Essays

(Hardback)

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Description

Breakout Author: Author's essays have received the "notable" distinction in seven editions of Best American Essays, including in 2019. This is his first book.

Blurbs/endorsements: Author is mining his connections to solicit a foreword from John Grisham and (then) Bryan Stevenson. If those endeavors don't prove fruitful, he should be able to get blurbs from them, Barry Scheck, and Albert Woodfox.

Credentials: Author is a renowned capital defense lawyer and has written about the issue for popular outlets for the past decade. He can provide authoritative commentary on any news related broadly to capital cases, corruption, and ineffectiveness in the criminal legal system.

Speaking: Author speaks regularly at trainings and conferences in the field.

Opportunities: The nature of death penalty cases means there is almost always an appeal, extension, or some other circumstance that gets covered topically.

Affiliations: National Legal Aid and Defender Association, the National Association for Criminal Defense Lawyers, and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Atlantic Center for Capital Representation.

Reviews

Praise for A Descending Spiral:
Essays from one of Americas most prominent death penalty abolitionists. . . . Bookman creates a clear, comprehensive portrait of a broken system, and the cases he highlights make for fascinating reading.
Kirkus Reviews

With lucid prose and a firm grasp of history and legal precedent, Bookman makes a persuasive argument that these dozen cases are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to death penalty injustices. This is a cogent and harrowing primer on whats wrong with capital punishment.
Publishers Weekly

An absorbing, stirring work. . . . Readers interested in the death penalty and injustice in the U.S. criminal justice system, as well as those who enjoyed Bryan Stevensons Just Mercy, will appreciate this title.
Library Journal

In A Descending Spiral: Exposing the Death Penalty in 12 Essays, Marc Bookman provides such entertainment as he lays out the many ways the American judicial system fails to safeguard the rights of those accused of capital crimes.
The Provincetown Independent

In twelve compelling essays . . . Bookman makes a clear and irrefutable case for the U.S. to join in banning a punishment relegated by so many other nations to the annals of the past.
Rain Taxi

No one covers the defects of our nations criminal justice system more forcefully or eloquently than Marc Bookman.
Robert Atwan, series editor of The Best American Essays

In these remarkable essays, Bookman achieves a dispassion that is more incisive and compelling than any overt advocacy. His gift for exquisite irony and his spare, trenchant prose are the perfect tools for exposing the injustices of a legal system that kills haphazardly. Sharpest writing on the death penalty since Koestler and Camus.
Anthony Amsterdam, university professor emeritus at New York University School of Law

Bookmans essays eloquently condemn capital punishment in America. They expose the cruelty and injustice that it imposes on the soul of America and point us toward a healing for which our country yearns.
Alfre Woodard, actress, producer, and political activist

Marc Bookman has been writing exquisitely about the cruelty and absurdity of our criminal justice system for years. In this moving series of essays, he weaves in the context and history of our barbaric capital punishment regime and the ways discrimination and bigotry have upheld the system that exists today. A devastating and illuminating book.
Josie Duffy Rice, president, The Appeal

As one of Americas premier capital defense attorneys, Bookman has dedicated his life to celebrating the humanity of those citizens we most want to forget. Here, he weaves an uninching portrait of twelve cases that illustrate in painful detail why the death penalty remains one of the greatest stains on the moral fabric of our society. These essays will make your blood run cold.
Tony Goldwyn, actor, director, and producer

Author Bio

Marc Bookman is the executive director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation, a nonprofit that provides services for those facing possible execution. Before that he spent many years in the Homicide Unit of the Defender Association of Philadelphia. He has published essays in The Atlantic, Mother Jones, VICE, and Slate.He lives in Philadelphia.