Welcome to Litsy!

I went to the library to return a few books & of course left with even more, including the tagged book which I discovered while browsing. I have posted about Schechter several times before & this massive anthology (almost 800 pages with index) sounds very very fascinating! Hawthorne on a visit to a waxworks display of crimes, Capote interviewing Manson associate, Hurston on the trial of Ruby McCollum etc.

A vast and utterly fascinating collection of true crime accounts in American history, starting with a Mayflower Pilgrim being tried and hung for murder, ending with the crimes of the rich and famous in 1990s Beverly Hills. Each account is a rich history lesson, written by an author of that time period (e.g. Cotton Mather and Abe Lincoln to Damon Runyon to Ann Rule). As society changes, so often does the type of crime and the resulting punishment.