Customer Reviews

Death Row Women: Murder, Justice, and the New York Press (Crime, Media, and Popular Culture)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book was well-researched and a good read, but it's pretty much a duplication of an earlier title by Wenzell Brown called "Women who have died in the chair", published around 1958 or so.

Gado's book goes into depth a bit more, but not much more. I think this book would have been better if it credited Mr. Brown for coming up with the original idea of doing such a work on 20th century women who were executed in the state of New York at Sing Sing.

I would read Brown's book first, and then decide if Gado's is worth it.

thanks!

This book is bad beyond the telling of it. It acheives none of its stated goals and the readers are subjected to tedious rehashes of well-known crimes with very little comparison and absolutely nothing fresh or new brought to the subject. It also aritrarily omits Martha Place who was the first woman executed using the electric chair becausee it happened in 1899. The author states that he has poured through hundreds of newspaper stories but there is no evidence of this here. The reader is not told what newspapers were publishing in the particular era covered. No trends in newspaper coverage is reported. No context is given. At almost $50.00 this book certainly isn't worth the price. A much better book on this subject is The Penalty Is Death: U.S. Newspaper Coverage of Women's Executions by Marlin Shipman while The Body in the Reservoir: Murder and Sensationalism in the South by Michael Trotti shows how a book like the Gaddo book should have been written. Even Ann Jones' Women Who Kill (1980) does a far better job discussing the media as it relates to the Ruth Snyder trial. Just a poorly written, sloppily edited, ineptly indexed book.

I can't even say how many times i have read this book. It really give you an inside scoop on the crimes and the last days of the females who we sent to their death.