There is no light darker than that which filters through the cells and souls on death row.

Now David Von Drehle, the prizewinning journalist of The Washington Post, takes us as never before into the world of death row inmates, the world of those who have been the victims of their crimes, and the world of those who have the power to punish by killing. Among the Lowest of the Dead introduces us to the lawyers who run their lives into the ground fighting to save killers, and the equally frazzled lawyers who fight to execute them.

We sit with the survivors of murder victims, waiting - sometimes for decades - for justice to come. We oversee the deliberations of governors as they sign death warrants, then sit passively by the telephone as the appointed hour passes. We go inside the courtrooms where judges intone the awful words "and may God have mercy on your soul." And we delve into the world of the sick, the vicious, the changed - even the innocent - men and women who spend their days in tiny cells waiting for the moment when time runs out.

A book of enormous and profound insight, cloaked in a prose poetic, stark, and stunningly revealing, Among the Lowest of the Dead is much more than one of the most powerful books ever written on crime and punishment in America - it is a look into the souls of the guilty, the innocent, and ourselves.

There is no light darker than that which filters through the cells and souls on death row, but David Von Drehle's masterpiece of prose and power illuminates this deepest, darkest realm like a prolonged flash of lightning.