Robert Blecker's "Let the Great Axe Fall" was formally a kindle single that was available on Amazon for a pittance, but for some reason or another is no longer available. That's a shame, because I really enjoyed reading this long form essay about the author's philosophical journey towards understanding why he inherently stands behind and for the death penalty.
The basic premise for accepting the death penalty as necessary in some cases is pretty straight forward; any rational person should be able to agree that there are certain people with monstrous behaviors that deserve to die. Hitler, Bin Laden, Hussein, Pol Pot, Manson, McVey.. on and on, there's a list of notorious criminals both in and out of war who committed heinous crimes without any feelings of remorse.
I won't get too far into explaining the essay, because I can't really summarize it further without writing a long form essay myself. Suffice to say that I think that Mr. Blecker has submitted to his readers a convincing essay and series of arguments for the death penalty. However, in the interest of full disclosure I myself didn't have a problem with the death penalty in the first place, so he was kind of preaching to the choir with me.
As far as other basic points on my standard review goes; the essay was written and edited well, with little to no grammatical and/or spelling mistakes. The subject matter can be interesting, but I wouldn't exactly call the essay a "page-turner". It's more of the kind of essay where you have to read a few pages, and then put it down and think about it. Repeat until you reach the end. This made the essay a rather slow read for me, rather than the quick read that it's 40 some odd pages would suggest. I needed time to digest what I had read, and compare it against my own moral compass.
On my corrected bell curve scoring system, with a 50 being perfectly average in all regards in terms of editing, effectiveness, readability etc.. This long essay by Robert Blecker was about a 55. I don't think it's destined for the "classic" reading level for the type of reader that I represent. Certainly the essay has much more meat to someone who studies the law in a professional capacity. However, it was still a thought-provoking read that I was satisfied with at the end.
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