Customer Reviews

Careers in Crime: An Applicant's Guide

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Criminal justice professionals can take a break from their serious and often stressful work days, and relax with a chuckle over Michael Weinberg's rankings of assorted criminal activities. Whether the type of crime is well known or rare in the everyday work of policing, prosecuting, or incarcerating, those working in these fields will get a well rounded perspective on how rewarding the crime is to the criminals they confront on a daily basis. Rating scores for compensation, enforcement penalties, hazards, and quality of work environment for various crimes gives the law enforcement professional a thoughtful look at what the criminal faces. In addition to his potential for success, there are the hoped for pitfalls that police officers are always on the lookout for. Careers in Crime also provides the prosecutor or watch commander with a handy conversation piece on their office desk.

The general reader will get a glimpse of the challenges that law enforcement faces without the tedium of dry statistics. And the criminal-to-be will see that many choices of crime have poorer outcomes than they may imagine, although one wonders how well they execute their career choices.

A must read for everyone on any side of crime!

This book is so well done, that at a first glance it's hard to tell whether this guy is joking or not. Either way, this hilarious compilation of 50 criminal jobs made the perfect gift for the guy in my life who already thinks he's a spy. I just hope he doesn't get any crazy ideas about a new career path!

I've never seen a book quite like this. In one sense, it's a parody of the bizillion over-serious career advice books out there. At the same time, it contains more inside information, anecdotes and hard data on criminal occupations than the 1,000 or so other true crime books I've read combined! This is the ULTIMATE gift book for anyone interested in criminals, careers on just plain laughs.

Michael Weinberg seems to know just a little too much about a life of crime. 'Careers in Crime: An Applicant's Guide' ranks 50 activities in terms of what each illegal occupation requires, the chances of getting arrested, potential compensation, and the stresses and hazards of the job. Written in an entertainingly faux-serious style, it presents interesting facts and anecdotes about the crooked life. For example, if you're considering becoming a mercenary, Weinberg wants you to know 'Extended visits to foreign lands can provide cultural enrichment, but battlefields are often uncomfortable places, and mercenaries typically work long hours under extraordinarily challenging physical and psychological conditions....' And while meth lab operators have to worry about explosions, fires, and inhaling toxic fumes, money launderers are more likely to worry about finger and eye fatique from having to count large stacks of bills by hand. (Poor dears!) In addition to being a great novelty gift -- think of how much fun it would be to hand this over to a recent graduate while their horrified parents look on -- 'Careers in Crime' could also be useful for fiction writers who want to create a shady character or two they could use it to jump-start their research and figure out the best (or worst) life of crime for the character. Or if you're a goody-two-shoes like me you could buy the book simply to read for fun. More than once I picked it up intending just to flip through it and ended up settling back to read for a while. It's reassuring to know I've made some good choices in life. I don't like traveling enough to be a cigarette smuggler, I sunburn too easily to hang out outside all day dealing crack, and safecracking sounds way too stressful. Much better just to read about it.

"Careers in Crime" was compiled by Michael Weinberg, an editor of the actual Jobs Rated Almanac, as a tongue-in-cheek counterpart of job seekers' manuals. He hits it right on, and Careers in Crime is packed full of interesting information on prospects for hot, not-so-legal careers, with an emphasis on crime for profit (rather than passion.)

The tone is so deadpan that it usually hits closer to "dead serious"; the entries are all real-life, info-dense, and fact-based, and when you come upon a rare phrase or sentence that's obviously meant as humor it's jarring more than funny; but that aside. the writing is engaging and the content is continously fascinating.

The text is sprinkled with graphics, graphs, and visualizations, in the style of the books it parodies; unfortunately, (and, unfortunately, also true to the original) most of the graphs could have been textbook examples from "How To Lie With Statistics" - I don't doubt the data is good, but always take a second look at how it's presented. My only other minor quibbles are with the typesetting - the columns are small and the letterspacing can change so much it interferes with reading. There's also a hidden but unfortunately clear assumption assumption in many entries that Weinberg's reader is male - a section assessing romantic prospects simply assumes that a high proportion of male practictioners is *bad* for dating prospects, and then there's the (highly stupid) Prison Wife article, which beyond its bewilderingly bowdlerized title, again completely ignores a woman's experience.

That said - this was a fun book, and full of great information which I would have been hard-pressed to know where to look for elsewhere. If you've ever watched a TV crime drama or read a suspense novel and thought "do people *really* do that for money?", this book has the answers. It's going on my reference shelf to stay.