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I look at the pictures of the victims, mostly young black men - some of them tortured and hanged, some of them burned beyond recognition. I look at the images of the white perpetrators, staring unabashedly into the camera; some of them looking satisfied, some of them looking jovial, but none of them showing any sense of ambivalence about the situation, or trying to obscure their identity. I see images of numerous children at these macabre gatherings, many grinning or smiling as if they are posing for family reunion photographs; I try to contextualize the images, but I cannot fully wrap my mind around them. According to contributing author Leon Litwack, "in the 1890's, lynching claimed an average of 139 lives each year, 75% of them black ... Between 1882 and 1968, an estimated 4,742 blacks met their deaths at the hands of lynch mobs. As many if not more blacks were victims of ...speedy trials and executions." Moreover, as further described by Litwack, "The story of a lynching...is more than the simple fact of [being] hanged by the neck. It is the story of slow, methodical, sadistic...forms of torture and mutilation. If executed by fire, it is the red-hot poker applied to the eyes and genitals...as the body slowly roasts over the flames and the blood sizzles in the heat. If executed by hanging, it is the convulsive movement of the limbs. Whether by fire or by rope, it is the dismemberment and distribution of severed bodily parts as favors and souvenirs to participants and the crowd." Additionally, contrary to general belief, lynching was not an exclusively "southern" phenomenon; particularly brutal and heavily-attended lynch mob activities have been documented in such northern states as Minnesota, Illinois, Nebraska, Indiana, and Ohio. 'Without Sanctuary' exposes details of a dark history that is seldom discussed in educational settings; details that, had pictorial evidence not been preserved, would have been considered unfathomable in 20th century American society. As stated succinctly by John Lewis in the opening section of the book, "Many people today, despite the evidence, will not believe - don't want to believe - that such atrocities happened in America not so very long ago. The photographs in this book make real the hideous crimes that were committed against humanity." He also asks the unanswered question "What is it in the human psyche that would drive a person to commit such acts of violence against their fellow citizens?" This question puts a shiver down my spine, and forces me to consider the thin veneer of our "civilized" society today. Many of the perpetrators involved with these grisly executions were described as "upstanding citizens" and leaders of their communities. In other words, many of these people were, for all intents and purposes, ordinary citizens not so very different from you and me today. This being established, do "ordinary" 21st century citizens have this same propensity toward barbarism versus jurisprudence? If a friend or family member was brutally raped or murdered, could I be incited toward "mob justice" against the perpetrator? While re-watching the NYC crowd footage following the announcement of the death of Osama Bin Laden, I tacitly wondered, if given the opportunity, would this enthusiastic mob of everyday citizens have wanted to torture and burn him on the spot in Times Square? These are some of the difficult questions that resonate in my mind as I review the images and text in 'Without Sanctuary.' Moreover, wanting to have this book as part of my personal collection also imbues me with an uneasy sense of ambivalence. Do I feel the need to collect this work via some "voyeuristic appetite" (as described by Litwack)? Or do I wish to add this to my library because of its capacity to "bear witness" to what Lewis refers to as an "American holocaust?" My internal spectrum on this is not by any means black-and-white; like much of the information provided in the essays, there is a tendency toward equivocation and shades of grey. Perhaps, more than anything, this powerful-yet-problematic work makes its most salient contribution by exposing (what contributing writer James Allen refers to as) "the cold steel trigger in the human heart." Cognizance of this extant human condition is requisite if we ever wish to truly transcend it.