A well-chosen sampling of writings from a rapidly expanding and developing field.
A collection of perceptive essays reveals the range of true-crime writing featured in magazines today.
The essays, all published in the past few years, veer away from the typical true-crime formula, which tends to focus, as editor Weinman notes, on “beautiful dead white girls.” In this collection, women are at least as likely to be perpetrators of crime as victims, and the contributors are hyperaware, sometimes to a fault, of their inherent fallibility in reporting the truth of the events they're considering. Weinman, who has vast experience in the genre, divides the book into three sections. The first includes relatively traditional crime stories told from unusual angles. Pamela Colloff's careful, thorough “The Reckoning,” for example, considers the 1966 University of Texas clock tower shooting not from the point of view of the gunman but by looking closely and compassionately at the decadeslong effects of the shooting on Claire Wilson, who was wounded in the tragedy and lost the baby with whom she was eight months pregnant. The provocative second section features essays on the intersection between crime and culture, such as Alex Mar’s incisive examination of two girls seemingly compelled to attempt murder by the internet meme of the “Slender Man.” Over the course of the essay, Mar establishes parallels to the girls who incited the Salem witch trials and another pair of girls in 1950s Australia. The third section widens out to include stories that wouldn't necessarily seem to fit the true-crime formula. These include Jason Fagone's graphic “What Bullets Do to Bodies,” in which he chronicles his experiences with the chief trauma surgeon at a Philadelphia hospital, and Melissa Del Bosque's insightful “Checkpoint Nation,” which explores the question of whether the Border Patrol often oversteps its authority. Other contributors include Michelle Dean, Alice Bolin, and Emma Copley Eisenberg.
A well-chosen sampling of writings from a rapidly expanding and developing field.Pub Date: July 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-283988-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
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
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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