Why I Watch People Die: and other futile explanations

Barry Graham's nonfiction is a unique hybrid of hard reporting and harsh autobiography. Since 1995, his home base has been Phoenix, Arizona, a sprawling desert metropolis where development, corruption and violence have grown together, aided and abetted by a dysfunctional media. Since moving to the U.S. from his native Scotland, Graham has staked out the Southwest as his territory, and written about it in a way that no one else has. His is not the Southwest of scenic natural wonders, petroglyphs and ancient Indian civilizations juxtaposed with modern spiritual seekers. His is the Southwest as gritty emblem of 21st Century America, of urban blight and the dispossessed, of the people left behind. Graham writes with corrosive honesty, giving no quarter to anyone, especially himself. This book contains his award-winning story of the two executions he has witnessed, along with other pieces that form a beautiful and terrifying portrait of a civilization in the process of collapse. "Graham has a visual style and writerly voice that are all his own: timely, urban and powerful." - Booklist