Nation states and communities throughout the world have reached certain decisions about capital punishment: It is the destruction of human life. It is ineffective as a deterrent for crime. It is an instrument the state uses to contain or eliminate its political adversaries. It is a tool of “justice” that disproportionality affects religious, social, and racial minorities. It is a sanction that cannot be fixed if unjustly applied.
           
Yet the United States—along with countries notorious for human rights abuse—remains an advocate for the death penalty. In these thirteen pieces, Mario Marazziti exposes the profound inhumanity and irrationality of the death penalty in this country, and urges us to join virtually every other industrialized democracy in rendering capital punishment an abandoned practice belonging to a crueler time in human history. A polemical book, yes, yet one that brings together a wide range of stories to compel the heart as well the mind. "Mario Marazziti's book is a deeply moving and cogently argued account of why an abominable practice, the death penalty, should be abolished. It dehumanises those who use it. Its mistakes cannot be corrected."—Desmond Tutu

"You WANT to read 13 Ways of Looking at the Death Penalty! Not only for its superb, well-crafted content, but because of its unique, colorful (very), amazing mover-&-shaker of an author, Mario Marazziti, whose friend I am proud to be. On the global scene no one has worked closer with me to abolish the death penalty than this man. These words are forged in fire!"—Sister Helen Prejan, author of Dead Man Walking

"Mario Marazziti is an intensely humane, companionable man who may know more about the death penalty than anyone else on this planet. In 13 Ways of Looking at the Death Penalty he delivers his knowledge with such clarity and charity that he takes the reader by surprise. This is a riveting and even, where appropriate, an entertaining book."—Thomas Cahill, author of How the Irish Saved Civilization and A Saint on Death Row