True Crime: An American Anthology - Library of America Special Edition | Historical Crime Stories Collection for Book Clubs & True Crime Enthusiasts
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Product Description
From the Mayflower to the Menendez brothers, a sweeping survey of the best writing about crime in AmericaAmericans have had an uneasy fascination with crime since the earliest European settlements in the New World, and right from the start true crime writing became a dominant genre in American writing. True Crime: An American Anthology offers the first comprehensive look at the many ways in which American writers have explored crime in a multitude of aspects: the dark motives that spur it, the shock of its impact on society, the effort to make sense of the violent extremes of human behavior. Here is the full spectrum of the true crime genre, including accounts of some of the most notorious criminal cases in American history: the Helen Jewett murder and the once-notorious "Kentucky tragedy" of the 1830s, the assassination of President Garfield, the Snyder-Gray murder that inspired Double Indemnity, the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Black Dahlia, Leopold and Loeb, and the Manson family. True Crime draws upon the writing of literary figures as diverse as Nathaniel Hawthorne (reporting on a visit to a waxworks exhibit of notorious crimes), Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser (offering his views on a 1934 murder that some saw as a "copycat" version of An American Tragedy), James Thurber, Joseph Mitchell, and Truman Capote and sources as varied as execution sermons, murder ballads, early broadsides and trial reports, and tabloid journalism of many different eras. It also features the influential true crime writing of best-selling contemporary practitioners like James Ellroy, Gay Talese, Dominick Dunne, and Ann Rule.
Customer Reviews
Murder is as old as humanity. Though every human society forbids it, people are, and have always been, fscinated by tales of murder. If you're one of those, youmust have this anthology.Although it is labeled a "True Crime" volume, its focus is on murder.Bernie Madoff may be a criminal, but he will never loom as large inthe public imagination as Charles Manson.The book represents over three hundred years of American murdersand those who chronicled them. Many of thesse crimes are famous--Manson, Leopold and Loeb,the Son of Sam--but even the obscure ones--The Scattered Dutchman, anyone?--make for grim but fascinating reading.The writers, too, represent a cross-section of American letters.There are those who might be called the usual suspects--veteran crimewriters like Ann Rule, Truman Capote and James Ellroy--but they representonly a fraction of the contributors.H.L. Mencken's essay "More and Better Psychopaths" could have beenwritten yesterday--albeit by the host of a conservative radio talk show;Benjamin Franklin's "Murder of a Daughter" proves that criminal childabuse is not a new phenomenon; and Abraham Lincoln's contributionhas an ending that anticipates O.Henry.If that's not enough, there's Robert Bloch on the real-life originsof "Psycho", Damon Runyon on the case that inspired "Double Indemnity"and Jack Webb of "Dragnet" fame on the infamous Black Dahlia murder.There's also Mark Twain on frontier justice and Edna Ferber, elegantlyfuming at the circus-like atmosphere at the Lindbergh trial.It's history. It's literature. It's even music---a selection ofclassic murder ballad lyrics is included.It's grim. It's fascinating. It's irresistable.
