Everyone has felt the urge to kill. Most people don't kill. Some do. "Guilty By Reason Of Insanity" is a riveting, point-blank portrait of those who have killed -- most often, and most viciously. Psychiatrist Dorothy Otnow Lewis has devoted herself to going where few others are willing or able to: into the hearts and minds of murderers, in search of the dark urges that drive them. As harrowing as it is fascinating, and as relentlessly readable as a psychological thriller, her true account of confrontations with society's most terrifying criminals takes readers to a place they have never been before...and will never completely leave behind.

The case of a thirteen-year-old girl launches Dr. Lewis, and eminent neurologist Jonathan Pincus, into their ongoing investigation of why people commit murder. It is a quest that leads to such chilling cases as the murder of a teenage girl by a grown woman with an adolescent lover, and a teenage boy condemned to death for a shocking rape and murder, whose lethal rage stems from a grotesque childhood. Ultimately, the search for answers brings Dr. Lewis face-to-face with a gallery of the most notorious killers, including Ted Bundy, Arthur Shawcross, Joel Rifkin, and Mark David Chapman.

Powerful, controversial, and utterly absorbing, "Guilty By Reason Of Insanity" is a landmark work. Not since Dead Man Walking has anyone become so empathically immersed in the criminal mind. It will forever change the way you think about crime, punishment, and the law itself.