While an increasingly outspoken American public is quick to endorse the death penalty, the voices of those who experience the chilling reality of executing another human being are seldom heard.

Donald A. Cabana chronicles a personal journey through the nation's prison system that culminated in giving the order to execute two death row inmates. Cabana's compelling account brings the reader inside the"secretive, mysterious world of the execution chamber" to witness the process of an execution and to experience the emotions of the executioner and the man strapped in the chair known as "black death."