About book Popular Crime: Reflections On The Celebration Of Violence (2011)
This book is about numerous crimes through the years.Many of the crimes discussed in the book are well known (O.J. Simpson Jon Benet Ramsey ) There are a couple of cases that I am interested in learning more about.Charyl Chessman aka Red Light Bandit. The Sam Sheppard case real life inspiration for the T.V.show Fugitive. Bill James writes a good book here, offers good background from the cases.He also acknowledges the works from other authors that will give more information on the subjects. His opinions that he includes about some of the cases i.e. innocent/guilt you will either love or leave em. Overall it is a good book for true crime buffs that will lead to searching out other books to enhance your knowledge of certain cases. Bill James is the person recognized as popularizing sabermetrics in baseball. This book looks at the fascination society has with sensational crime stories. As the book points out, this phenomena is by no means unique to modern American culture, and has been around in England and America since the 1700's. I really wanted to like it. The book is at its best when it devotes several pages to a particular case and examines not just the crime but the factors as to why the case drew so much attention. One example is the Levi Weeks murder trial in New York in 1800. Aside from a sordid murder story, the defense team consisted of Brockholst Livingston (who would later become a Supreme Court Justice), Alexander Hamilton, and Aaron Burr (who would later kill Hamilton in a duel – most tense legal team ever?). James also spends time critiquing the reporting of such cases and other true crime books. Again, when James goes into details why something was wrong or sucked, the book works.Unfortunately, there is too little of this. Most of the time, there is not enough description why a particular case was supposed to be interesting, and there is no rhyme or reason to the layout of the book or the points he raises. As a whole, the book is a disorganized mess. He often rips other true crime books for poor writing or faulty conclusions but doesn’t really lay out why. Quite frankly, I don’t think his writing style here is good enough to criticize others.
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Bill James's analysis of the Kennedy assassination is brilliant.
—adenicky
