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Popular Crime: Reflections on the…
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Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence (original 2011; edition 2012)

by Bill James

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3561671,855 (3.33)25
Presents a cultural analysis of sensational crime in America that profiles such infamous cases as the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, the Black Dahlia murder, and O.J. Simpson's trial to offer insight into topics ranging from evidence practices to radicalism.
Member:Opinionated
Title:Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence
Authors:Bill James
Info:Scribner (2012), Paperback, 512 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:***1/2
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Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence by Bill James (2011)

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» See also 25 mentions

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NF
  vorefamily | Feb 22, 2024 |
Love Bill James. Love his sense of humor. You gotta slog through some BS here about crime policy and correctional institutions where he's in over his head but if you just want someone to tell you stories of famous crimes for 400 pages, pick this one up immediately. ( )
  Smokler | Jan 3, 2021 |


Strong start that soon becomes a tangled mire. Towards the end it felt like a chore to finish as it lost sight of its primary thesis. ( )
  sunwords | Mar 21, 2020 |
I'm extremely conflicted here. On the one hand, this book meanders, doesn't always make clear points (or any point at all), is sometimes hard to follow, and the author frequently exhibits boorish attitudes. On the other hand, it was really fun to read. ( )
  ratastrophe | Jan 26, 2016 |
I'm not entirely sure what this book is about - I mean, yes, it's about popular crime, but in what sense? It seems to be mostly about why certain stories become famous, but it's also about why crimes are and aren't solved effectively, what's wrong with the American justice system, and how things have changed over the past hundred or so years. James makes some assumptions and generalizations I think are flat wrong, but he also makes some excellent and interesting points. I had a fun time reading this, and I'd love to have a beer with the guy and discuss his ideas, so I'll call this book a success. ( )
  jen.e.moore | Jan 25, 2015 |
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If you’re interested in baseball, you’re interested in Bill James — he’s the inventor of sabermetrics, the ideological engine behind Michael Lewis’ best-selling Moneyball, and the sport’s most influential writer and historian of the past 25 years. But you know what Bill James is interested in? Murderers. He’s interested in crime, the people who commit them, and — perhaps most tellingly — the people who write about them.

Over the span of his 62 years, James has read (by his own estimate) more than 1,000 books on the subject of crime and spent countless hours trying to figure out what they really mean; he’s tried to understand both the nature of the criminal mind and the meaning of society’s relationship with acts of the unspeakable. Now, after decades of unconscious research, James has written Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence. It’s a fascinating, comprehensive, deeply strange book (it dissects crime literature as much as it dissects crime, sometimes seeming like the most intense 10th grade book report the world has ever seen).
added by SnootyBaronet | editGrantland, Chuck Klosterman
 
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This book is dedicated to Phyllis McCarthy, my wife's most gracious mother.
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In Rome in the year 24 AD, the praetor Plaautius Silvanus pushed his wife Apronia out of the window in the middle of the night.
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Presents a cultural analysis of sensational crime in America that profiles such infamous cases as the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, the Black Dahlia murder, and O.J. Simpson's trial to offer insight into topics ranging from evidence practices to radicalism.

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