Customer Reviews

Capital Crimes

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This is one of the best books on American crime that I have ever read. It is excellent because it illustrates the connections between street crime, drugs, U.S. foreign policy and --above all -- corporate greed and amorality. From the jungles of Burma to Miami, from the woods of Oregon to the S and L scandal, this book is sweeping in its analysis, and highly accessible. Clearly written. Critical. Thought-provoking. Calls it like it is.

Winslow's work is tremendously vital, epic in scope, vivid in its details. While the case study approach may seem to be disconcerting at first, the way Winslow draws the focus back out from each case to the wider horrors demonstrates the impeccable nature of his analysis. This is as good a history of our times up until the neo-con Bushian takeover as there is, showing how all the tendencies and traps were in place for war, punishment, corporate criminality, and the hollowing out of the American economy. Winslow writes not as an academic, but as a careful reader and writer, repudiating the supposed superiority of the established "Name" or academic big-thinker. Sober and free of sectarian jargon, a classic.