Micael Lesy, the author of several books, including Wisconsin Death Trip and Visible Light, holds a doctorate in American history. He has taught American studies at Yale and documentary photography at the Art Institute of Chicago. In this unusual work, Lesy examines the American fascination and repulsion of death. He writes, "Most of us want to know only just enough to experience it imaginatively and then live to tell the tale, like Lazarus returned to the light."
In Forbidden Zone, he speaks with people whose work brings them into daily contact with death. He visits a medium-sized packing house in Omaha where 110 cattle are killed every hour as well as an Orthodox Jewish slaughterhouse where one animal at a time is dispatched painlessly. Lesy talks with a professional killer who learned all the tricks of his trade while in Vietnam. He also chats with a pathologist, a warden who supervises executions, a homicide detective, two competing funeral home directors, and a doctor who works with terminally ill AIDS patients. Lesy's skills as a journalist are evident in the authenticity of these accounts. It becomes quite clear that the zone of death is not something that Americans want to deal with in any serious way.