Back From The Dead

An NBA sports star and cultural icon discusses his catastrophic spinal collapse in 2007, the excruciating pain he suffered and his slow recovery, as well as his childhood, sports career, and the political and cultural upheaval of the 1960s.

What would happen if the United States abolished the death penalty and emptied its Death Rows? If killers were released from prison? What would they do with their second chance to live? Would they kill again? Back From The Dead is the story of 589 former death row inmates who, through a lottery of fate, were given a second chance at life in 1972 when the death penalty was abolished; it returned to the United States four years later. During the years she represented Walter Williams on Texas’ Death Row, Cheever always wondered what would happen if his death sentence was reversed and he was eventually released from prison. Would he have killed again? Two years after Williams’ execution, Cheever was determined to find the answer. Leaving her young family and comfortable life in suburbia, she traveled across the U.S. and into the lives and homes of former Death Row inmates, armed only with a tape recorder, notepad, a cell phone that didn’t always work, and a lot of faith. In Back from the Dead , Cheever describes her own journey and reveals these tales of second chances: of tragedy and failure, racism and injustice, and redemption and rehabilitation. Visit www.backfromthedeadusa.com to find out more. Back From the Dead is an excellent choice for your Book Reading Group or School Group. On the website www.backfromthedeadusa.com there are questions for group discussion, as well as an 'interview with the Author'. Joan Cheever will chat by speakerphone with any group that chooses Back From the Dead. Now you have the chance to ask your questions directly to the author. Why did Joan Cheever write this book? What was she looking for? Did she find it? How did she research Back From the Dead? What difficulties did she encounter? What was it like, interviewing and meeting former Death Row inmates? How did she leave her little children to do this? What was she feeling while on the road with The Class of '72? What was the most surprising thing she learned in writing about the men whose return address had once been: Death Row USA. A chat with the author is FREE – just get a group of readers together and make sure you have a speakerphone and Joan Cheever will do the rest! How to Make a Request for a Telephone Conversation with the Author Your request for a speakerphone chat with Joan Cheever can be made through the form on this page: http://www.backfromthedeadusa.com/book_groups_form.html Here are the guidelines: • Chats are scheduled between 9 AM Central and 8 PM Central time. (All time requests must be converted to Central Time.) • You'll be asked to provide a choice of dates and times. The more dates you can provide, the easier it will be to schedule a chat. The time you request should be 30 minutes to an hour after your group begins meeting so your group has some time to settle in first. • Leave a comment to let Joan know how you found out about the book and why you chose it for your group. Also, tell Joan a little bit about your book group – what other books you’ve been reading, the range of ages in the group, where you are from etc. • Chats are not limited only to readers of Back From the Dead in the United States. As long as it can be scheduled within the hours listed above, Joan welcomes a conversation with readers across the globe. • And if a chat is not possible, Joan is working on setting up an online 'Instant Message' discussion so that readers can ask the questions they have AND get an immediate response online during your meeting! The Chat Details Once you’ve made your request, we will be back in touch with you, usually within a few days. Together we will determine the date and time for the chat. You will need access to a speaker telephone. Joan recommends giving it a trial run beforehand by having someone in your group dial in to that phone from outside. Make sure that you can hear her clearly—and that she can hear you from a good distance away. Plan for Joan to call you 30 minutes to an hour after your group gets together. At that point you will have begun your discussion about Back From the Dead and Joan will be able to answer the questions from the author’s perspective! At the appointed time, Joan will call in and for the next 30 - 45 minutes, you can put your feet up, relax and find out more about Back From the Dead, the author, her research and any news updates.

The thrilling story of one man's journey to find peace. Detective Shane Donovan has lost everyone he loves. When his best friend is killed he is pushed to the edge. Shane seeks revenge against those responsible, years of special training has prepared him for this epic battle. Shane soon learns he must battle more than those who killed his friend as he starts to lose his mind, he realize he is in the battle of his life. Suffering from depression and having all but lost his will to live Shane is only concerned with getting revenge and the desire to get even continues to grow in him as he digs deeper into the death of his friend. Along the way Shane encounters those who would prefer he give up this vendetta and the police captain he threatens to lock him up if he does. The only thing that can save Shane is the love of a woman but he has not loved a woman in years and refuses to let anyone get close to him. Shane is pulled in two directions and eventually has to make the decision of his life, to kill or not to kill.

China's party-run courts have one of the highest conviction rates in the world, with forced confessions remaining a central feature. Despite recent prohibitions on evidence obtained through coercion or torture, forced confessions continue to undermine the Chinese judicial system. Recounting some harrowing cases of wrongful conviction, acclaimed legal scholar and novelist He Jiahong analyzes many problems in China's justice system. In one such case, Teng Xingshan was convicted in 1988 and later executed for murdering his mistress, but almost six years later it was discovered that the supposed victim, Shi Xiaorong, was still alive. In 2005, Teng's children submitted a complaint to the Hunan High People's Court, which then issued a revised judgment. In another case, She Xianglin was convicted of murdering his wife in 1994 and was sentenced to death, but this sentence was later commuted to fifteen years' imprisonment. In 2005, She's wife, presumed dead for over eleven years, "returned to life"; She was released from prison two weeks later, retried and found not guilty. With riveting examples, the author surveys the organization and procedure of criminal investigation, the lawyering system for criminal defense, the public prosecution system, trial proceedings, as well as criminal punishments and appeals. In doing so, He highlights the frequent causes of wrongful convictions: investigators working from forced confessions to evidence; improperly tight deadlines for solving criminal cases; prejudicial collection of evidence; misinterpretation of scientific evidence; continued use of torture to extract confessions; bowing to public opinion; nominal checks among the police, prosecutors and the courts; the dysfunction of courtroom trials; unlawfully extended custody with tunnel vision; and reduced sentencing in cases of doubt. The author also provides updated information about recent changes and reforms as well as the many continuing challenges of the criminal justice system in China.

Back from the Dead by Nathan Wright Winston Roy Martin sits alone in a jail cell, wrongly imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. As he awaits the hanging that is sure to come, he is plotting his escape and freedom. But these things come with a price, and it is up to Winston to pay his debts. As he struggles to take his next step, he encounters many new faces, but whom can he trust? One wrong move can mean the difference between seeing another day and the end of the road as Winston knows it.

Bahamas, 1971, and Ernst Hess, missing presumed dead, regains consciousness to find himself stuck in a hospital bed on a strange ward in a foreign country... Back from the Dead pitches us and the gang - Harry, Cordell, Colette and Joyce - back into a desperate fight to the death, which moves from the Bahamas to Florida, and from Germany to the South of France, as their worst fear comes back to haunt them. Whip-smart, action packed and darkly funny, the second part of Peter Leonard's glorious two-hander packs some serious punch.

Perhaps only someone who has worked for almost a decade as a medic in New York City's Hell's Kitchen--as Joe Connelly has--could write a novel as riveting and fiercely authentic as Bringing Out the Dead. Like a front-line reporter, Connelly writes from deep within the experience, and the result is a debut novel of extraordinary power and intensity. In Frank Pierce, a brash EMS medic working the streets of Hell's Kitchen, Connelly gives us a man who is being destroyed by the act of saving people. Addicted to the thrill ("the best drug in the world") and the mission of the job, Frank is nevertheless drowning in five years' worth of grief and guilt--his own and others': "my primary role was less about saving lives than about bearing witness." His wife has left him, he's drinking on the job, and just a month ago he "helped to kill" an eighteen-year-old asthmatic girl. Now she's become the waking nightmare of all his failures: hallucination and projection ("the ghosts that once visited my dreams had followed me out to the street and were now talking back"), and as real to him as his own skin. And in reaction to her death, Frank has desperately resurrected a patient back into a life now little better than death. In a narrative that moves with the furious energy of an ambulance run, we follow Frank through two days and nights: into the excitement and dread of the calls; the mad humor that keeps the medics afloat; the memories, distant and recent, through which Frank reminds himself why he became a medic and tries, in vain, to convince himself to give it up. And we are with him as he faces his newest ghost: the resurrected patient, whose demands to be released into death might be the most sensible thing Frank has heard in months, if only he would listen. Bringing Out the Dead is a stunning novel.

Since 1968, the name of motion picture director George Romero has been synonymous with the living dead. His landmark film Night of the Living Dead formed the paradigm of modern zombie cinema; often cited as a metaphor for America during the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement, the film used the tenets of the drive-in horror movie genre to engage the sociophobics of late-1960s culture. Subsequently Romero has created five more zombie films, and other directors, including Tom Savini and Zack Snyder, have remade Romero's movies. This survey of those remakes examines ways in which the sociocultural contexts of different time periods are reflected by changes to the narrative (and the zombies) of Romero's original versions.

After witnessing a murder, Julia is forced to keep quiet—until she receives a message from the dead boy and realizes she’s in even more danger than she suspected Julia reluctantly joins her cousin Nikki and her friends for a night of partying. Climbing into the hills, they spot Heath, a strange guy from school, and they chase him into a dilapidated cabin. Julia watches, horrified, as Nikki’s friends set fire to the old building and wait for Heath to run out in terror. He never appears, and the cabin burns to the ground. Julia knows she must go to the police. But Nikki and her friends threaten to kill Julia if she tells anybody what happened. But then Julia receives the note that changes everything: “You tried to kill me. For that you will die.”

In February 2008, Bill Walton, after climbing to the top of every mountain he ever tried, suffered a catastrophic spinal collapse--the culmination of a lifetime of injuries--that left him in excruciating, debilitating, and unrelenting pain. Unable to walk, he underwent pioneering surgery and slowly recovered. The ordeal tested Walton to the fullest, but with extraordinary determination and sacrifice, he recovered. Now Bill Walton shares his life story in this remarkable memoir. Walton, the son of parents with no interest in athletics, played basketball in every spare moment. An outstanding player on a great high school team, he only wanted to play for John Wooden at UCLA--and Wooden wanted him. Walton was deeply influenced by the culture of the 1960s, but he respected the thoughtful, rigorous Wooden, who seemed immune to the turmoil of the times. Other than his parents, Wooden would be the greatest influence in Walton's life--the two would speak nearly every day for 43 years until Wooden's death. Throughout a brilliant championship career, accumulating injuries would afflict Walton. He would lose almost two-thirds of his playing time to injury. After his playing days ended, Walton chose a career in broadcasting, despite being a lifelong stutterer--once again he overcame a physical limitation and eventually won multiple broadcasting accolades. Wooden once said that no greatness ever came without sacrifice--nothing better illustrates this notion than Walton's life.--Adapted from dust jacket.