Book Description

"Fast paced and elegantly crafted, Theodore Hamm's Rebel and a Cause demands our attention. This deft historical analysis of the famous Chessman case and of the entire spectrum of political and cultural struggle surrounding capital punishment should be read by lay people and experts alike. Rigorously researched, superbly argued, this book -unfortunately - becomes all the more relevant with each new execution."—Christian Parenti, author of Lockdown America: Police and Prison in the Age of Crisis "Historians of the American 1960s have begun to attend to the previously-neglected topic of "crime in the streets." In the long run, the demand from the Right for "Law and Order!" may have done more to shape the history of subsequent decades than the better-known demands from the Left for "Freedom Now!" and "Peace in Vietnam!" In his crisply-written and subtly nuanced study Rebel and a Cause, Theodore Hamm shows how California death row inmate Caryl Chessman became the unlikely flashpoint for a series of passionate confrontations between advocates and opponents of the death penalty, as well as between the New Right, the New Left, and the liberal establishment."—Maurice Isserman, author of America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s "This book is a must read for anyone interested in the current death penalty debate."—George T. Davis, former counsel to Caryl Chessman