Another darkly compelling work from an engrossing storyteller.
A crime historian’s account of a Jekyll-and-Hyde savant who stunned 19th-century America with a series of murders.
By all outward appearances, Edward Rulloff (1819-1871) was highly intelligent and cultured. When he died, his enormous brain—which scientists preserved for study—earned notoriety as belonging to a killer whose gruesome exploits put him in the same league as Jack the Ripper. In her latest page-turning book of historical true crime, Dawson, the author of American Sherlock and Death Is in the Air, examines the life of this “once-lauded scholar, a nineteenth-century polymath who charmed his way to the upper echelons of intellectual society,” all while living the secret, violent life of a serial murderer. After an introductory section, the author begins in 1871, a few weeks before Rulloff’s death, which found him in jail awaiting final word on his proposed execution. Writers, scholars, and alienists (psychiatrists) fascinated with the murderer’s story came to visit him, each for different reasons. “After his past was unmasked,” writes the author, “Rulloff was tantalizing fodder for journalists—a murderer cloaked as an intellectual savant anonymously roaming the streets of 1800s Manhattan.” Journalist Ham Freeman empathized with Rulloff’s hardscrabble past and approached the killer with hopes of gaining “a career-making opportunity” for himself. Greek and Latin scholar George Sawyer sought to disprove Rulloff’s work as a philologist and reveal the killer as nothing more than a clever phony. Many experts believe Rulloff was a high-level psychopath like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy. As Dawson chillingly demonstrates, he was remarkably skilled at manipulating people into getting what he wanted; he was able to convince many scholars, for example, that he was completely innocent of his crimes. As the author memorably portrays an unrepentant killer, she engagingly grapples with the still-unresolved question of whether psychopathic evil emerges from brain anomalies or nurture and the environment—or some combination thereof.
Another darkly compelling work from an engrossing storyteller.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-42006-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
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
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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