Customer Reviews

True Crime: An American Anthology

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This book does what any great anthology should do . . . sends the reader off in search of more of the orignal sources used. I had no idea that Jack Webb (of Dragnet fame) had published a book of true crime stories. I also went off in search of Abraham Lincoln's original writings that discussed the murder case detailed here. This book can be devoured from cover to cover or you can stretch it out over a longer period as filler between other books you are reading. Each section has an indepth introduction which completes the picture of what was happening with the particular case or author - - another indispensible attribute of a perfect anthology.

Every five or ten years a crime captures the public imagination and shakes the norms of societal expectations. How each of us reacts to them becomes a kind of ink blot test. These sensational events are inflection points that reflect what society was and what it is becoming. Of course, the O. J. Simpson murders, Son of Sam, The Boston Strangler, Speck killing those nurses, and Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" were all sensational and driven by the media. Nowadays, with the 24 news channels fixating on JonBenet Ramsey, Natalie Holloway are video extensions of this genre, but the written books and articles are what is collected in this fascinating book. Harold Schechter, the editor, not only selected the articles, but also provided an opening essay on this genre and its place in American letters and journalism. He explores ideas about why people become obsessed with these crimes and the role these stories play in our national psyche. We all have our own views on the subject, but I found Schecter's article quite interesting.

This book includes dozens of articles and excerpts about cases that were the O.J. Simpson furors of their time. Some names still linger in the popular imagination even if the details of the crimes do not (Lizze Bordon, Sacco and Vanzetti, Leopold and Loeb remain). Others have faded to oblivion (who recalls the 1922 Hall-Mills murders?). I was also interested in seeing some of the very famous names among the list of authors: Cottom Mather, Benjamin Franklin, Nathaniel Hawthorn, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, H. L. Mencken, James Thurber, Calvin Trillin, Gay Talese, Truman Capote, Jimmy Breslin, and Dominick Dunne to name just a few.

I am quite sure that those interested in True Crime will enjoy this volume, but I am not such a devotee. Yet, I found this book captivating. I found the quality of the writing shockingly good and the broad span of time covered let me see how the culture changed over time. Seeing how people of different eras explained and tried to understand crime was also a way to gain insight into the human need to understand even when we have to make up explanations to fool ourselves into believing that the unexplainable can still make some sense.

A great contribution and a fine addition to the LOA list of offerings.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

I hate to admit this publicly, but this excellent anthology highlights Americans' (including guilty me) macabre fascination with crime through famous authors who over the years, especially the last few decades, have made this into a powerful genre. The collection starts in colonial times with Puritan documents and Ben Franklin; runs into the nineteenth century with Bierce, Hawthorne and Mark Twain; and into the twentieth century and this decade with a genre who's who to include Dreiser, Thurber, Capote, Dunne, Rule, Ellroy and Talese. The compilation includes some of the most felonious activities in American history; several of which gained additional notoriety through movie versions like Double Indemnity, the Black Dahlia, and Compulsion. Finally, True Crime analyzes why people love the genre. This is a winner for fans as Harold Schechter analyzes the roots, the history, and the current popular state of the genre through authors and their subjects even with many of the cases included like Son of Sam of Bronx infamy well known.

Harriet Klausner

The Library of America's "True Crime: an American Anthology" - 'past-to-present' anthology containing much of the best American true-crime writing spanning the 350-year period from way back in the 17th Century down to the present-day.

Given the vast body and range of true-crime literature in existence, editor Schechter set limits that narrow the central focus of his true-crime selections to Homicide cases - and also excludes excerpts from classic crime books (like the groundbreaking In Cold Blood) in favour of self-contained pieces on, as Schechter puts it, "particularly horrific and unsettling crimes that erupt into ordinary lives". Included in this killer collection are many notorious real-life homicide cases (Son of Sam who terrorised New York, a profile of the Menendez brothers who brutally murdered their parents) as well as some gripping lesser known murder cases (the Halls-Mills murder mystery 'affair', involving the murder of a minister and his lover).

Contemporary true-crime practitioners stand shoulder-to-shoulder with writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser, James Thurber and Truman Capote (author of first non-fiction novel, the classic true-crime book In Cold Blood). Schechter's expertise in the True-Crime genre is apparent from his introduction to the anthology, full of insight into how true-crime reportage evolved over time. And there's a bonus! Preceding each selection, Schechter includes concise, informative 'lead-ins' full of references that open doorways to further reading.

One colorful piece, Calvin Trillin's offbeat "A Stranger With A Camera", set in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, involves the shooting dead of a journalist by a local 'hillbilly'. Mountain people living in isolated mountain pockets and up remote hollows in ramshackle, dilapidated shacks harboured deep-rooted suspicion and distrust of strangers and outsiders: unruly folk who couldn't give a damm what anyone else thinks of them, a breed of people who follow their own rule of law - the law of the mountains, the code of the hills - and quick to dispense their own brand of justice when it comes down to protecting their property from transgressors, interfering outsiders and "smart-alecks come to hold us up to ridicule", even if it means running them off at the end of a loaded gun. Equally fascinating is "The Trial of Ruby McCollum" arising from the shooting dead of a leading physician (and respected state senator) by his mistress, an African American woman who had one child by him and was pregnant with another - and her subsequent murder trial in a County in which the Ku Klux Klan was a powerful presence.

Other gripping real-life homicides in this murder anthology include: a tense, minute-by-minute action replay of a shooting spree massacre stemming from an explosion of resentment the killer felt over disparaging remarks made by neighbours; an account of the crime, incarceration and execution of a convicted murderer who was hanged twice over; a series of murders involving passing travellers who stopped over at a family-run Wayside Tavern in 1870's Kansas, never to see the light of day again; the psychological motivation that spurred a psychopath and his homosexual lover to kill for the thrill. Also included: Mark Twain writing on violence in the Old West where the rule of law, gun-law, dictated that a man is not respected "until he has killed his man"; H.L.Mencken's scathing denunciation of what he sees as worthless lowlife criminals being treated with kid-gloves; Cotton Mather's accounts of criminal executions, containing exhaustive execution sermons (31 pages that could and should have been trimmed IMO); a selection of murder ballads.

The theme of Homicide is well-served by this excellent compilation. Good editorial choices and writing of a high calibre in most cases in a killer collection that will satisfy anyone with a vicarious passion for murder.

The true crime story has always been an integral part of oral and written history. Pirates, highwaymen, and political rebels were immortalized in ballads. Thousands assembled for non-Christian reasons to hear Puritan execution sermons (and see the hangings that followed). When crime became commercialized via the penny press, the reading public devoured stories about the axe murder of prostitute Helen Jewett in 1836 or the 1833 trial of Reverend Ephraim Avery for the death of his pregnant factory girl mistress. In 1875, Celia Thaxter published an essay about a local mass murder called `A Memorable Murder': this nonfiction account told in story form foretold the works of Truman Capote, who described his bestseller "In Cold Blood" as a "nonfiction novel". If anyone did something heinous between 1880 and 1930 and stood trial for it, theirs was usually touted in the press as the `Crime of the Century': think Lizzie Borden or Leopold and Loeb.

"True Crime: An American Anthology" is a series of faithfully reproduced stories, articles and essays that reveal how American crime reporting and writing has changed over the centuries. Cotton Mather's `Pillars of Salt' is an extended religious tract, while Damon Runyon's `The Eternal Blonde', written while covering the 1927 murder trial of Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray, is as superficial and flippant as the era. Truman Capote's `And It All Came Down' is a jailhouse interview with Manson family member Bobby Beausoleil that yields some unsettling clues into the mind of a convicted killer. (Beausoleil says, "Good or bad? It's ALL good. If it happens, it's got to be good. Otherwise it wouldn't be happening.")

My personal favorite was Theodore Dreiser's commentary on the 1934 trial of 23 year old Robert Allen Edwards for the drowning murder of his pregnant girlfriend. The circumstances of the girl's death mirrored the storyline of Dreiser's 1925 masterpiece An American Tragedy, so the New York Post sent him to cover the story. Dreiser's insights into the social and sexual forces that propelled Allen are masterpieces in psychology.

This remarkable collection is both a history of the true crime genre and a harrowing record of man's inhumanity to man.

in America -- starting with William Bradford's account the hanging of a murderer who arrived on the Mayflower.

The other reviewers here have described their pleasure (sometimes quite unexpected) in this marvelous collection, and I heartily concur. It's a joy to dip into this anthology and read about some crime that transfixed Americans of the day.

The book, which does not fit the normal Library of America format, is still available from LOA. The table of contents does not appear here in the editorial materials; scan through this list and marvel at the wide range of subjects and authors -- most of which are very well written:

Harold Schechter
Introduction

William Bradford
The Hanging of John Billington

Cotton Mather
Pillars of Salt

Benjamin Franklin
The Murder of a Daughter

Anonymous
An Account of a Murder Committed by Mr. J-- Y--, Upon His Family, in December, A.D. 1781

Timothy Dwight
"A crime more atrocious and horrible than any other"

The Record of Crimes in the United States
Jesse Strang

James Gordon Bennett
The Recent Tragedy

Nathaniel Hawthorne
"A show of wax-figures"

Abraham Lincoln
Remarkable Case of Arrest for Murder

Ambrose Bierce
Crime News from California

Mark Twain
from Roughing It

Anonymous
Jesse Harding Pomeroy, the Boy Fiend

Lafcadio Hearn
Gibbeted

Celia Thaxter
A Memorable Murder

José Martí
The Trial of Guiteau

Thomas Byrnes
The Murder of Annie Downey, alias "Curly Tom"

Frank Norris
Hunting Human Game

Susan Glaspell
The Hossack Murder

Murder Ballads
Poor Naomi
Stackalee
The Murder of Grace Brown
Belle Gunness
The Murder at Fall River
Trail's End

Thomas S. Duke
Mrs. Cordelia Botkin, Murderess

Edmund Pearson
Hell Benders, or The Story of a Wayside Tavern

Damon Runyon
The Eternal Blonde

Herbert Asbury
from The Gangs of New York

Alexander Woollcott
The Mystery of the Hansom Cab

Joseph Mitchell
Execution

H. L. Mencken
More and Better Psychopaths

Theodore Dreiser
Dreiser Sees Error in Edwards Defense

Dorothy Kilgallen
Sex and the All-American Boy

Edna Ferber
Miss Ferber Views "Vultures" at Trial

Jim Thompson
Ditch of Doom

James Thurber
A Sort of Genius

Meyer Berger
Veteran Kills 12 in Mad Rampage on Camden Street

John Bartlow Martin
Butcher's Dozen

A. J. Liebling
The Case of the Scattered Dutchman

Zora Neale Hurston
The Trial of Ruby McCollum

Jack Webb
The Black Dahlia

Elizabeth Hardwick
The Life and Death of Caryl Chessman

Robert Bloch
The Shambles of Ed Gein

Miriam Allen deFord
Superman's Crime: Loeb and Leopold

W. T. Brannon
Eight Girls, All Pretty, All Nurses, All Slain

Don Moser
The Pied Piper of Tucson

Calvin Trillin
A Stranger with a Camera

Gay Talese
Charlie Manson's Home on the Range

Truman Capote
Then It All Came Down

Jimmy Breslin
"Son of Sam"

Jay Robert Nash
The Turner-Stompanato Killing: A Family Affair

Albert Borowitz
The Medea of Kew Gardens Hills

James Ellroy
My Mother's Killer

Ann Rule
Young Love

Dominick Dunne
Nightmare on Elm Drive

Robert C. Ross 2010

Fascinating crimes combined with great writing--what more could anyone want?

This collection starts with a murderer who came over on the Mayflower, and ends with the famous Dominick Dunn telling the tale of the Menendez killings.

Many of the writers will be familiar to anybody, such as Ann Rule, who tells a seemingly normal young man who simply cannot give up on a girl who no longer loves him. Don't expect to only find crimes that have been written about over and over. Most of the stories were new to me, such as "The Medea of Kew Gardens Hills".

Not all of the stories have resolutions. A few leave us hanging, wishing we could know just who committed the crime. But altogether, a wonderful collection.

This is the best book I've read in a long time. The selections are eye-opening and even the essays I had read before are the sort that are good to read again and again which is especially good because I almost rather wish I hadn't read this book yet for the absolute pleasure of reading it for the first time. An outstanding work of scholarship that is equally enjoyable for the lay reader.

This anthology contains a varied collection of true crime pieces - see the Library of America website for the table of contents. The focus of the stories varies quite a bit: some are more about the crime, some center on the trial, or even the execution. Each story has a helpful preface about the author and the context of the story. It was hard to put the book down when reading most of these stories; pieces such as "Butcher's Dozen" and "The Case of the Scattered Dutchman" were truly excellent. The book is arranged in chronological order and the earlier historical pieces were generally not as good - Cotton Mather, for instance, is not what I consider good bedside reading. The Theodore Dreiser analysis of a trial defense strategy is in the same category. By contrast, the Abraham Lincoln tale was pretty good. Overall, the really great stories more than compensate for the duds and make this a very worthwhile volume.

The physical format of the book itself is a little different than the standard LOA binding, being a little larger and having thicker pages than the usual very thin LOA page style.

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, you
must 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 in
the public imagination as Charles Manson.

The book represents over three hundred years of American murders
and 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 crime
writers like Ann Rule, Truman Capote and James Ellroy--but they represent
only a fraction of the contributors.

H.L. Mencken's essay "More and Better Psychopaths" could have been
written yesterday--albeit by the host of a conservative radio talk show;
Benjamin Franklin's "Murder of a Daughter" proves that criminal child
abuse is not a new phenomenon; and Abraham Lincoln's contribution
has an ending that anticipates O.Henry.

If that's not enough, there's Robert Bloch on the real-life origins
of "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, elegantly
fuming at the circus-like atmosphere at the Lindbergh trial.

It's history. It's literature. It's even music---a selection of
classic murder ballad lyrics is included.

It's grim. It's fascinating. It's irresistable.