Capital punishment, renounced as archaic by almost all modern countries, is an increasingly hot topic in America. As a parade of wrongly convicted inmates are freed from death row we wonder, can capital punishment be an effective tool of justice or is it merely institutionalized vengeance - barbaric and obsolete? Not the usual dry, pro-and-con presentation of the death penalty debate, "Death Defying" takes a different look at capital punishment. Author-activist Pam McAllister grapples with the complex underlying issues of violence and victimization, the natural desire for revenge in an age of terrorism, and the hope for healing. McAllister utilizes an eclectic array of images, lessons, and metaphors - with sources ranging from the fine arts to pop culture, opera to folk songs, "Hamlet" to "Harry Potter". McAllister's takes an offbeat and often surprising historical overview of capital punishment, taking readers from the days when disrespecting one's parents, pick-pocketing and even laziness were capital offences, through the Middle Ages when animals (a rooster charged with the crime of egg-laying!) and inanimate objects could be put on trial and sentenced to death, to today's clinical death by lethal injection in death chambers that look like public toilets. This book should galvanize readers - from concerned couch potatoes to seasoned activists - with ideas of how the machinery of death can be dismantled and the cycle of violence and revenge broken.