Laurelin hit the nail on the head (and FWIW I was able to read it on my computer on the Kindle Cloud player after downloading it). The purpose of this book is to bring to light the possibility that some dogs die in shelters because of the shelters. That there are too many people involved in positions of power who don't care if the animals in their shelters live or die. And some who seem to prefer killing them to allowing them to leave the shelter alive. So often we hear that it isn't right to question shelter workers, that they are "doing all they can" and "no one wants to kill animals". But stories like Laurelin's are too common in the shelter world. Shelters don't have to answer to anyone. The groups that could (and really should) be advocating for shelter animals and promoting shelter reform not only aren't doing so but are actively defending and supporting shelters like the the one Laurelin mentioned. While making a lot of money portraying themselves as being something they are not.
I remember when I was in 4H one of the other girls in the club started volunteering at a local shelter. This happened to be the shelter the "humane agent" works out of. Since she was under 18 and she could only work with the cats but she was an animal lover and was happy to go help anyway she could. However, it didn't last very long. She went into the cat area one day to find one of the workers pulling kittens out of their cages, heartsticking them and dropping them into a box. It was an extremely traumatic experience for her. Fast forward to more recent times, the same shelter "rescued" 90 cats from a local no-kill cat shelter citing overcrowding and illness as being an issue. I had not been to their shelter and know they were in the midst of moving to a larger facility when this happened. At any rate, the cats they showed on the new during the "raid" did not appear to be terribly ill or neglected. A few had seemed to have eye or respiratory infections, which is extremely common in cats in our area that are allowed outdoors (my friend's very well cared for cats get these a couple times a year). But at any rate, 80+ of those 90 cats were killed within a week of being taken into the humane agent's shelter. Before anything legal action was taken and without attempting to work with other groups to find housing for them. It become obvious that they took the cats to kill them
Beyond that, I have known shelter/rescue workers who refused to place dogs people wanted, threatened to or did kill dogs because they were mad at the foster home or the person who found the dog rubbed them the wrong way, would kill dogs because they were bad about having their nails cut and so on and so forth. A big shelter here that has a vet on staff had a policy to kill all puppies with parvo and any HW+ dog. Even though they could easily quarantine and neither of those are particularly expensive for a shelter with a vet on staff to treat. A 4H family fostered a puppy for them that ended up having Parvo. They were told to bring the puppy to the shelter and leave him tied to the fence and the vet would get him when she got in. The same shelter killed a BC mix that a local family found and held on to for more than a month looking for her owner. The family had kids and another dog. They had fallen in love with this dog but their landlord wouldn't nudge on letting them keep her. So they took her to the local shelter on "stray night" to get her vet care started and get her into their program. A shelter worker took her in the back then came out and told them they had to put her to sleep because she "tried to bite" them while they were getting blood. The family was crushed. The dog had shown no aggression at all in their household. This shelter is supposedly "no kill" but their definition of adoptable can be rather narrow. They've gone through a lot of director changes over the years. One director wouldn't accept dogs back and if a dog they adopted out didn't work with the new family they said to try Craigslist or one of the local pounds. The last one regularly took dogs to the county pound. I have no idea what the current director's policies are though. Hopefully more progressive.
And then there is our county pound. The place Emily's Blossom came from. Ten years ago, Blossom would likely not have gotten out of there alive. A lot of dogs didn't. Almost no pit bulls did. Local rescues and other shelters did what they could to get the most adoptable dogs but the pound workers were not always cooperative with their efforts. One rescue worker told me she'd go the end of the day before dogs were scheduled to die in the morning and try to get the dogs who's time was up (owner surrenders at any time and strays after 3 days) and they still wouldn't make it easy for those dogs to be pulled. The shelter was rarely full to capacity at that time and not due to lack of dogs coming in.
The change that has happened just with someone else being in charge is huge. While they are not no-kill, things have dramatically improved. That almost seems like an understatement. Adoptable dogs are not killed within any certain time frame, they gladly work with rescues and other shelters, they have hours that allow working people to come see the dogs. They have volunteers who walk dogs, clean and gets dogs on Petfinder. They have a lot of pit bulls and the pit bulls are available for adoption. Some are there for months. The last time the pound was at capacity, the dog warden went to the media. Not saying "we're going to have to kill dogs now and it's all your fault" but saying they don't want to be faced with the possibility of killing for space and asking people who have been thinking of adding a dog to consider one of the ones at the pound. Or to foster. They asked rescues with room to help them out (regular fees are waived for rescues and the $10 pull fee they do charge is often covered by a local group of volunteers). They ran "specials" on adult dogs, black dogs, etc. Local vet clinics offered even bigger discounts on spay/neuter to bring the adoption fee down. And...they didn't kill any dogs for space. Not because they weren't full with more coming in but because they were willing to try everything else first.