A thorough history of wiretapping as it moved from a criminal act to a legitimate tool of law enforcement.
A study of how electronic surveillance became an accepted tool of law enforcement and a pervasive feature of everyday life.
Hochman, the director of American Studies at Georgetown, traces the origins of wiretapping to the Civil War, when spies on both sides learned to intercept the enemy’s telegraph messages. The war hadn’t even ended before D.C. Williams, a California commodities trader, was tapping into competitors’ telegrams to make lucrative trades. Soon, wiretaps were a standard weapon in the scam artist’s repertoire, notably in getting inside information on gambling results. With the arrival of the telephone, crooks learned to exploit the new medium, especially for blackmail purposes. Law enforcement didn’t lag far behind: New York City detectives were tapping phones as early as 1895. Hochman examines critical court cases establishing the status of wiretap evidence. A significant precedent was a 1928 case in which the Supreme Court sanctioned Prohibition agents’ use of wiretaps to convict a bootlegger. Congress tried to reverse the precedent a few years later, with the Federal Communications Act, making it illegal to intercept and divulge the contents of an electronic communication. In 1940, a secret memo by Franklin Roosevelt allowed federal wiretaps in national security cases, a decision that pleased the FBI. But in 1950, Judge Learned Hand threw out a conviction in an espionage case built largely on wiretap evidence, and the issue went back to Congress. By the 1960s, the FBI was bugging a long roster of suspected radicals, from Malcolm X to Benjamin Spock, and Nixon was recording White House conversations. The author follows the trends into the computer age, with Congress opening the gates to almost universal spying with the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. Amply documented, occasionally dry, this is a solid study of the legal and technical evolution of electronic spying.
A thorough history of wiretapping as it moved from a criminal act to a legitimate tool of law enforcement.Pub Date: March 8, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-674-24928-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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