AUTOPSY OF AMERICA; The Death of a Nation is a harrowing look deep inside the crumbling apocalyptic landscape of America through the eyes of Photojournalist Seph Lawless. Autopsy of America takes you through the tattered remnants of the United States of America in a way that you never seen before. The beautiful apocalyptic landscapes consisting of abandoned schools, factories, shopping malls, amusement parks, theaters, hospitals, sport arenas, homes even entire towns offer a visual diagnostic to some of the county's true ills. The captivating images are accompanied by Lawless' personal anecdotes and thought-provoking stories that are equally riveting as the images.

Photographer Seph Lawless is an Instagram sensation due to his passion for urban exploration and photographing the ruins of the stark, abandoned cities of America's heartland. His passion evolved into a book, Autopsy of America, that exposes the America ravaged by economic decline, rampant unemployment, foreclosures and the like. Grim, yet beautifully photographed, accompanied by Lawless' eloquent musings, the deserted dwellings hold remnants of scattered lives-an empty high chair, a dirty mattress, broken dishes, dusty toys and mangled dolls. Where are the families-the children, mothers, fathers, friends? The landscape is that of a battered, wounded America for all to see. Autopsy of America is a love story for the America we once knew and a forewarning of the America we dare not envision.

A revealing history of covering up the true causes of deaths of BIPOC in custody—from the forensic pathologist whose work changed the course of the George Floyd, Eric Garner, and Michael Brown cases Dr. Michael Baden has been involved in some of the most high-profile civil rights and police brutality cases in US history, from the government’s 1976 re-investigation of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., to the 2014 death of Michael Brown, whose case sparked the initial Ferguson protests that grew into the Black Lives Matter movement. The playbook hasn’t changed since 1979, when Dr. Baden was demoted from his job as New York City’s Chief Medical Examiner after ruling that the death of a Black man in police custody was a homicide. So in 2020 when the Floyd family, wary of the same system that oversaw George Floyd’s death, needed a second opinion—Dr. Baden is who they called. In these pages, Dr. Baden chronicles his six decades on the front lines of the fight for accountability within the legal system—including the long history of medical examiners of using a controversial syndrome called excited delirium (a term that shows up in the pathology report for George Floyd) to explain away the deaths of BIPOC restrained by police. In the process, he brings to life the political issues that go on in the wake of often unrecorded fatal police encounters and the standoff between law enforcement and those they are sworn to protect. Full of behind-the-scenes drama and surprising revelations, American Autopsy is an invigorating—and enraging—read that is both timely and crucial for this turning point in our nation’s history.

Why is the American system of death investigation so inconsistent and inadequate? In this unique political and cultural history, Jeffrey Jentzen draws on archives, interviews, and his own career as a medical examiner to look at the way that a long-standing professional and political rivalry controls public medical knowledge and public health.

A revealing history of covering up the true causes of deaths of BIPOC in custody—from the forensic pathologist whose work changed the course of the George Floyd, Eric Garner, and Michael Brown cases Dr. Michael Baden has been involved in some of the most high-profile civil rights and police brutality cases in US history, from the government’s 1976 re-investigation of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., to the 2014 death of Michael Brown, whose case sparked the initial Ferguson protests that grew into the Black Lives Matter movement. The playbook hasn’t changed since 1979, when Dr. Baden was demoted from his job as New York City’s Chief Medical Examiner after ruling that the death of a Black man in police custody was a homicide. So in 2020 when the Floyd family, wary of the same system that oversaw George Floyd’s death, needed a second opinion—Dr. Baden is who they called. In these pages, Dr. Baden chronicles his six decades on the front lines of the fight for accountability within the legal system—including the long history of medical examiners of using a controversial syndrome called excited delirium (a term that shows up in the pathology report for George Floyd) to explain away the deaths of BIPOC restrained by police. In the process, he brings to life the political issues that go on in the wake of often unrecorded fatal police encounters and the standoff between law enforcement and those they are sworn to protect. Full of behind-the-scenes drama and surprising revelations, American Autopsy is an invigorating—and enraging—read that is both timely and crucial for this turning point in our nation’s history.