For years, American states have tinkered with the machinery of death, seeking to align capital punishment with evolving social standards and public will. Against this backdrop, North Carolina had long stood out as a prolific executioner with harsh mandatory sentencing statutes. But as the state sought to remake its image as modern and business-progressive in the early twentieth century, the question of execution preoccupied lawmakers, reformers, and state boosters alike. In this book, Seth Kotch recounts the history of the death penalty in North Carolina from its colonial origins to the present. He tracks the attempts to reform and sanitize the administration of death in a state as dedicated to its image as it was to rigid racial hierarchies. Through this lens, Lethal State helps explain not only Americans' deep and growing uncertainty about the death penalty but also their commitment to it. Kotch argues that Jim Crow justice continued to reign in the guise of a modernizing, orderly state and offers essential insight into the relationship between race, violence, and power in North Carolina. The history of capital punishment in North Carolina, as in other states wrestling with similar issues, emerges as one of state-building through lethal punishment.

Through thirty compelling essays written in the prisoners’ own words, Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row offers stories of brutal beatings inside juvenile hall, botched suicide attempts, the terror of the first night on Death Row, the pain of goodbye as a friend is led to execution, and the small acts of humanity that keep hope alive for men living in the shadow of death. Each carefully crafted personal essay illuminates the complex stew of choice and circumstance that brought four men to Death Row and the cycle of dehumanization and brutality that continues inside prison. At times the men write with humor, at times with despair, at times with deep sensitivity, but always with keen insight and understanding of the common human experience that binds us.

In February 2003, an undocumented immigrant teen from Mexico lay dying in a prominent American hospital due to a stunning medical oversight--she had received a heart-lung transplantation of the wrong blood type. In the following weeks, Jesica Santillan's tragedy became a portal into the complexities of American medicine, prompting contentious debate about new patterns and old problems in immigration, the hidden epidemic of medical error, the lines separating transplant "haves" from "have-nots," the right to sue, and the challenges posed by "foreigners" crossing borders for medical care. This volume draws together experts in history, sociology, medical ethics, communication and immigration studies, transplant surgery, anthropology, and health law to understand the dramatic events, the major players, and the core issues at stake. Contributors view the Santillan story as a morality tale: about the conflicting values underpinning American health care; about the politics of transplant medicine; about how a nation debates deservedness, justice, and second chances; and about the global dilemmas of medical tourism and citizenship. Contributors: Charles Bosk, University of Pennsylvania Leo R. Chavez, University of California, Irvine Richard Cook, University of Chicago Thomas Diflo, New York University Medical Center Jason Eberl, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis Jed Adam Gross, Yale University Jacklyn Habib, American Association of Retired Persons Tyler R. Harrison, Purdue University Beatrix Hoffman, Northern Illinois University Nancy M. P. King, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Barron Lerner, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health Susan E. Lederer, Yale University Julie Livingston, Rutgers University Eric M. Meslin, Indiana University School of Medicine and Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis Susan E. Morgan, Purdue University Nancy Scheper-Hughes, University of California, Berkeley Rosamond Rhodes, Mount Sinai School of Medicine and The Graduate Center, City University of New York Carolyn Rouse, Princeton University Karen Salmon, New England School of Law Lesley Sharp, Barnard and Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health Lisa Volk Chewning, Rutgers University Keith Wailoo, Rutgers University

Robert Levine tells the story of Carolina Maria de Jesus (1914-1977), Brazilian, Black, illegitimate, extremely poor, and Brazil's best-selling author upon the publication of her journals.

A young police woman was found shot to death on exclusive Bald Head Island off North Carolina. The local DA ruled it a suicide but the evidence said otherwise. Who killed her and why did they go so far to cover it up? Read for yourself and decide what you think took place and who did it.

The global doubling of human life expectancy between 1850 and 1950 is arguably one of the most consequential developments in human history, undergirding massive improvements in human life and lifestyles. In 1850, Americans died at an average age of 30. Today, the average is almost 80. This story is typically told as a series of medical breakthroughs—Jenner and vaccination, Lister and antisepsis, Snow and germ theory, Fleming and penicillin—but the lion's share of the credit belongs to the men and women who dedicated their lives to collecting good data. Examining the development of death registration systems in the United States—from the first mortality census in 1850 to the development of the death certificate at the turn of the century—Count the Dead argues that mortality data transformed life on Earth, proving critical to the systemization of public health, casualty reporting, and human rights. Stephen Berry shows how a network of coroners, court officials, and state and federal authorities developed methods to track and reveal patterns of dying. These officials harnessed these records to turn the collective dead into informants and in so doing allowed the dead to shape life and death as we know it today.

Radiant in her white satin wedding gown, Patricia Blakley was living a dream come true. At last, she was marrying the man she loved, Ted Kimble—a fellow Christian and son of a local preacher. But little did she realize her new husband had a dark side. Shock waves rocked the small, North Carolina town of Pleasant Garden when Patricia's charred body was discovered inside the Kimble's burned-out home. Soon family and friends learned an even worse truth—Patricia had died from a bullet wound to the head. Now, in Unholy Covenant, North Carolina journalist Lynn Chandler-Willis uncovers the story behind the crime. Taking readers from the crime scene to the courtroom, she delivers a passionate account of a crime that forever changed the lives of many in the small North Carolina community.

One Blood traces both the life of the famous black surgeon and blood plasma pioneer Dr. Charles Drew and the well-known legend about his death. On April 1, 1950, Drew died after an auto accident in rural North Carolina. Within hours, rumors spread: the man who helped create the first American Red Cross blood bank had bled to death because a whites-only hospital refused to treat him. Drew was in fact treated in the emergency room of the small, segregated Alamance General Hospital. Two white surgeons worked hard to save him, but he died after about an hour. In her compelling chronicle of Drew's life and death, Spencie Love shows that in a generic sense, the Drew legend is true: throughout the segregated era, African Americans were turned away at hospital doors, either because the hospitals were whites-only or because the 'black beds' were full. Love describes the fate of a young black World War II veteran who died after being turned away from Duke Hospital following an auto accident that occurred in the same year and the same county as Drew's. African Americans are shown to have figuratively 'bled to death' at white hands from the time they were first brought to this country as slaves. By preserving their own stories, Love says, they have proven the enduring value of oral history. General Interest/Race Relations

For more than a century, the term "Main Street" has conjured up nostalgic images of American small-town life. Representations exist all around us, from fiction and film to the architecture of shopping malls and Disneyland. All the while, the nation has become increasingly diverse, exposing tensions within this ideal. In The Death and Life of Main Street, Miles Orvell wrestles with the mythic allure of the small town in all its forms, illustrating how Americans continue to reinscribe these images on real places in order to forge consensus about inclusion and civic identity, especially in times of crisis. Orvell underscores the fact that Main Street was never what it seemed; it has always been much more complex than it appears, as he shows in his discussions of figures like Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, Frank Capra, Thornton Wilder, Margaret Bourke-White, and Walker Evans. He argues that translating the overly tidy cultural metaphor into real spaces--as has been done in recent decades, especially in the new urbanist planned communities of Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Andres Duany--actually diminishes the communitarian ideals at the center of this nostalgic construct. Orvell investigates the way these tensions play out in a variety of cultural realms and explores the rise of literary and artistic traditions that deliberately challenge the tropes and assumptions of small-town ideology and life.