WHY I WATCH PEOPLE DIE (AND OTHER FUTILE EXPLANATIONS) by Barry Graham
127 x 204mm, 176 pages, black and white printing, perfect bound, softcover, 2019, signed edition.
This unclassifiable hybrid of harsh autobiography and hard reporting opens with an alienated Barry Graham arriving in Phoenix, Arizona, from his native Scotland in 1995. Plunging into chaotic relationships and empty sexual encounters, he also witnesses two executions and investigates Joe Arpaio, the corrupt and brutal Sheriff of Maricopa County. He investigates the deaths of unarmed young Latino men at the guns of cops, rides along with the Phoenix Gang Enforcement Unit, reports on the criminal trial of Governor Fife Symington, visits and revisits the city's ghosts and legends, and finds refuge and healing in writing and in the practice of Zen.
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