Heroes in the Night by
The Watchman didn't arrive in a Batmobile but drove a tan, four-door Pontiac. He was in costume, of course--a trench coat, motorcycle gloves, army boots, a domino mask, and a red hooded sweatshirt emblazoned with a W logo. Journalist Tea Krulos had spoken to him over the phone but never face-to-mask. By the end of the interview, he wasn't sure if the Watchman was delightfully eccentric or completely crazy. But he was going to find out. Heroes in the Night traces Krulos's journey into the strange subculture of Real Life Superheroes, random citizens who have adopted comic book-style personas and hit the streets to fight injustice. Some concentrate on humanitarian or activist missions--helping the homeless, gathering donations for food banks, or delivering toys to children--while others actively patrol their neighborhoods looking for crime to fight. By day, these modern Clark Kents work as dishwashers, pencil pushers, and executives in Fortune 500 companies. But by night, only the Shadow knows. Well, the Shadow and Tea Krulos. Through historical research, extensive interviews, and many long hours walking patrol in Brooklyn, Seattle, San Diego, Minneapolis, and Vancouver, British Columbia, Krulos discovered what being a RLSH is all about. He shares not only their shining, triumphant moments but some of their ill-advised, terrifying disasters as well. It's all part of the life of a superhero. As the Watchman explains, "If everyone made little changes in what they did, gave a little more to charity, watched out for their neighbors, we wouldn't have the problems that we have."
Identity Thieves by
Although identity theft is one of the fastest growing economic crimes in the United States, researchers have devoted little attention to understanding identity thieves. Basing their work on interviews with 59 inmates serving time in federal prison for a variety of identity theft crimes, Copes and Vieraitis use criminological and sociological theories to gain insight into the cognitive, behavioral, and organizational aspects of identity theft. They also offer policy recommendations to reduce the ever-increasing threat of this crime.
Hostage by
On October 23, 2009, Somali pirates kidnapped Paul and Rachel Chandler from their sailing boat, the Lynn Rival, in the Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean. In this remarkable memoir, the Chandlers recount their terrifying ordeal, revealing the inspiring and poignant story behind the dramatic headlines. The book chronicles the aftermath of the attack, and how the Chandlers' captors held them in Somalia for more than a year while trying to extort millions of dollars from their middle-class family. It goes on to describe how despite enduring threats, intimidation, solitary confinement, and even whippings, their unshakable belief in each other and their determination to survive sustained them. With its detailed, day-to-day account of the experience of being held captive by pirates, this unique and inspiring story will resonate with travelers the world over.
Munich 1972 by
Set against the backdrop of the turbulent late 1960s and early 1970s, this compelling book provides the first comprehensive history of the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, notorious for the abduction of Israeli Olympians by Palestinian terrorists and the hostages' tragic deaths after a botched rescue mission by the German police. Drawing on a wealth of newly available sources from the time, eminent historian David Clay Large explores the 1972 festival in all its ramifications. He interweaves the political drama surrounding the Games with the athletic spectacle in the arena of play, itself hardly free of controversy. Writing with flair and an eye for telling detail, Large brings to life the stories of the indelible characters who epitomized the Games. Key figures range from the city itself, the visionaries who brought the Games to Munich against all odds, and of course to the athletes themselves, obscure and famous alike. With the Olympic movement in constant danger of terrorist disruption, and with the fortieth anniversary of the 1972 tragedy upon us in 2012, the Munich story is more timely than ever.
Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban by
A unique insight into the post-Osama bin Laden generation of al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders from a journalist who interviewed many of them.
Truman Capote and the Legacy of in Cold Blood by
Ralph F. Voss was a high school junior in Plainville, Kansas in mid-November of 1959 when four members of the Herbert Clutter family were murdered in Holcomb, Kansas, by "four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives," an unimaginable horror in a quiet farm community during the Eisenhower years. No one in Kansas or elsewhere could then have foreseen the emergence of Capote's book-which has never gone out of print, has twice been made into a major motion picture, remains required reading in criminology, American Studies, sociology, and English classes, and has been the source of two recent biographical films. Voss examines Capote and In Cold Blood from many perspectives, not only as the crowning achievement of Capote's career, but also as a story in itself, focusing on Capote's artfully composed text, his extravagant claims for it as reportage, and its larger status in American popular culture. Voss argues that Capote's publication of In Cold Blood in 1966 forever transcended his reputation as a first-rate stylist but second-rate writer of "Southern gothic" fiction; that In Cold Blood actually is a gothic novel, a sophisticated culmination of Capote's artistic development and interest in lurid regionalism, but one that nonetheless eclipsed him both personally and artistically. He also explores Capote's famous claim that he created a genre called the "non-fiction novel," and its status as a foundational work of "true crime" writing as practiced by authors ranging from Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer to James Ellroy, Joe McGinniss, and John Berendt. Voss also examines Capote's artful manipulation of the story's facts and circumstances: his masking of crucial homoerotic elements to enhance its marketability; his need for the killers to remain alive long enough to get the story, and then his need for them to die so that he could complete it; and Capote's style, his shaping of the narrative, and his selection of details-why it served him to include this and not that, and the effects of such choices--all despite confident declarations that "every word is true." Though it's been nearly 50 years since the Clutter murders and far more gruesome crimes have been documented, In Cold Blood continues to resonate deeply in popular culture. Beyond questions of artistic selection and claims of truth, beyond questions about capital punishment and Capote's own post-publication dissolution, In Cold Blood's ongoing relevance stems, argues Voss, from its unmatched role as a touchstone for enduring issues of truth, exploitation, victimization, and the power of narrative.
We Cannot Forget by
During a one-hundred-day period in 1994, Hutus murdered between half a million and a million Tutsi in Rwanda. The numbers are staggering; the methods of killing were unspeakable. Utilizing personal interviews with trauma survivors living in Rwandan cities, towns, and dusty villages, We Cannot Forget relates what happened during this period and what their lives were like both prior to and following the genocide. Through powerful stories that are at once memorable, disturbing, and informative, readers gain a critical sense of the tensions and violence that preceded the genocide, how it erupted and was carried out, and what these people faced in the first sixteen years following the genocide.
Disability Hate Crimes by
Disability hate crimes are a global problem. They are often violent and hyper-aggressive, with life-changing effects on victims, and they send consistent messages of intolerance and bigotry. This ground-breaking book shows that disability hate crimes do exist, that they have unique characteristics which distinguish them from other hate crimes, and that more effective policies and practices can and must be developed to respond and prevent them.
The Subject of Murder by
The subject of murder has always held a particular fascination for us. But, since at least the nineteenth century, we have seen the murderer as different from the ordinary citizenOCoa special individual, like an artist or a genius, who exists apart from the moral majority, a sovereign self who obeys only the destructive urge, sometimes even commanding cult followings. In contemporary culture, we continue to believe that there is something different and exceptional about killers, but is the murderer such a distinctive type? Are they degenerate beasts or supermen as they have been depicted on the page and the screen? Or are murderers something else entirely? In "The Subject of Murder," Lisa Downing explores the ways in which the figure of the murderer has been made to signify a specific kind of social subject in Western modernity. Drawing on the work of Foucault in her studies of the lives and crimes of killers in Europe and the United States, Downing interrogates the meanings of media and texts produced about and by murderers. Upending the usual treatment of murderers as isolated figures or exceptional individuals, Downing argues that they are ordinary people, reflections of our society at the intersections of gender, agency, desire, and violence.
Is Killing Wrong? by
"Thou shalt not kill" is arguably the most basic moral and legal principle in any society. Yet while some killers are pilloried and punished, others are absolved and acquitted, and still others are lauded and lionized. Why? The traditional answer is that how killers are treated depends on the nature of their killing, whether it was aggressive or defensive, intentional or accidental. But those factors cannot explain the enormous variation in legal officials' and citizens' responses to real-life homicides. Cooney argues that a radically new style of thought--pure sociology--can. Conceived by the sociologist Donald Black, pure sociology makes no reference to psychology, to any single person's intent, or even to individuals as such. Instead, pure sociology explains behavior in terms of its social geometry--its location and direction in a multidimensional social space. Is Killing Wrong? provides the most comprehensive assessment of pure sociology yet attempted. Drawing on data from well over one hundred societies, including the modern-day United States, it represents the most thorough account yet of case-level social control, or the response to conduct defined as wrong. In doing so, it demonstrates that the law and morality of homicide are neither universal nor relative but geometrical, as predicted by Black's theory.
The Killing Compartments by
An incisive exploration of why acts of mass annihilation take place and how people become mass killers By historical standards, the early years of the twenty-first century have been remarkably peaceful. Only rarely are people killed by their own kind, and only very, very rarely are they killed by other animals, microorganisms excepted. Nevertheless, even though the statistics should reassure, many people worry about lone killers, murderous gangs, and terrorist bands. At the same time, most people are vaguely aware that even in this relatively calm era, wars have made countless victims. Yet mass violence against unarmed civilians has claimed three to four times as many lives in the past century as war: one hundred million at least, and possibly many more. These large-scale killings have required the efforts of hundreds of thousands of perpetrators. Such men (and almost all were males) were ready to kill, indiscriminately, for many hours a day, for days and weeks at a stretch, and sometimes for months or even years. Unlike common criminals who work outside the mainstream of society, in secret, on their own or with a few accomplices, mass murderers almost always worked in large teams, with full knowledge of the authorities and on their orders. Without exception, they operated within a supportive social context, most often firmly embedded in the institutions of the ruling regime. Unlike terrorists, the mass murderers usually did not want their deeds to be widely known. How people are enrolled in the service of evil is a question that lies at the heart of this trenchant book. The subject here is mass annihilation--that is, massive, asymmetric violence at close range, where killers and victims are in direct confrontation. Abram de Swaan offers a taxonomy of mass violence that focuses on the rank-and-file perpetrators, examining how murderous regimes recruit them and create what De Swaan calls the "killing compartments" that make possible the worst abominations without apparent moral misgiving, without a sense of personal responsibility, and, above all, without pity. De Swaan wonders where extreme violence comes from and where it goes--seemingly without a trace--when the wild and barbaric gore is over. And what about the perpetrators themselves? Are they merely and only the product of external circumstance? Or is there something in their makeup that helps them become mass murderers? Drawing on a wide range of disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, political science, history, and psychology, De Swaan sheds light on an urgent and seemingly intractable pathology that continues to poison peoples all over the world.
Who Killed Betty Gail Brown? by
On October 26, 1961, after an evening of studying with friends on the campus of Transylvania University, nineteen-year-old student Betty Gail Brown got into her car around midnight -- presumably headed for home. But she would never arrive. Three hours later, Brown was found dead in a driveway near the center of campus, strangled to death with her own brassiere. Kentuckians from across the state became engrossed in the proceedings as lead after lead went nowhere. Four years later, the police investigation completely stalled. In 1965, a drifter named Alex Arnold Jr. confessed to the killing while in jail on other charges in Oregon. Arnold was brought to Lexington, indicted for the murder of Betty Gail Brown, and put on trial, where he entered a plea of not guilty. Robert G. Lawson was a young attorney at a local firm when a senior member asked him to help defend Arnold, and he offers a meticulous record of the case in Who Killed Betty Gail Brown? During the trial, the courtroom was packed daily, but witnesses failed to produce any concrete evidence. Arnold was an alcoholic whose memory was unreliable, and his confused, inconsistent answers to questions about the night of the homicide did not add up. Since the trial, new leads have come and gone, but Betty Gail Brown's murder remains unsolved. A written transcript of the court proceedings does not exist; and thus Lawson, drawing upon police and court records, newspaper articles, personal files, and his own notes, provides an invaluable record of one of Kentucky's most famous cold cases.
Representations of Murderous Women in Literature, Theatre, Film, and Television by
This collection examines the meaning, construction and deconstruction of the murdering woman. These essays suggest that the ways in which gender, race, class and sexuality play into representations of women murderers is key to understanding the patriarchal underpinnings of our judicial system as they apply to women criminals.
Crime and Criminal Behavior by
In this book, Chapter One begins with a discussion on the use of dogs in the courtroom. Chapter Two explores the research on the criminal narratives of general offending populations, and introduces new insight into Mentally Disordered Offenders (MDOs), and the impact various mental disorders may have on the structure of criminal narratives. Chapter Three critically examines the link between personality disorders and violent offending, and raises several issues that have obscured its nature. Chapter Four reviews the status of Life Course Persistent Antisocial Behavior, as well as its importance for providing future directions for the study of crime and criminal behavior in the next half century. Chapter Five reviews the nature and causes of quality-of-life crime, the indicators for measuring or benchmarking the extent of quality-of-life crime, the development of the Quality-of-Life Crime Index (QLCI), and the practical, policy and research implications of this index. Chapter Six analyses taxi drivers everyday security practices in their networks and nodes, calling attention to their conception of space and their risk management techniques.
Fans of True Crime - this is your invitation to go on a (reading) spree!
