In 1972 the United States Supreme Court made a surprising ruling: the country's death penalty system violated the Constitution. The backlash was swift, especially in Texas, where executions were considered part of the cultural fabric, and a dark history of lynching was masked by gauzy visions of a tough-on-crime frontier. When executions resumed, Texas quickly became the nationwide leader in carrying out the punishment. Amid a larger wave of criminal justice reform came the death penalty's decline, a trend so durable that even in Texas the punishment appears again close to extinction. Chammah charts the rise and fall of capital punishment through the eyes of those it touched. -- adapted from publisher info