Simon Baatz

Most people are probably familiar with the infamous Leopold and Loeb case: two teenagers in 1924 Chicago kill a 14-year-old boy, Robert Franks, for no reason other than the thrill of it (Ladies and gentlemen, we have a title!). They're quickly caught and jailed; their wealthy families hire lawyer extraordinaire Clarence Darrow to save them from the gallows, where pretty much every convicted murderer was sent in those days.

Even if you've seen Alfred Hitchcock's Rope around 542 times, as I show more have, Simon Baatz's account is worth reading, if only to correct the misconceptions that you probably have about the case. (Oddly, Baatz, a professor of history who appears to be in his 40s, says in an author's note that he'd never heard of the case until a year or two before he began writing the book. Go figure.) For example: Leopold and Loeb were teenagers when the committed the crime (18 and 17, respectively), and didn't come from simply privileged backgrounds, but extremely wealthy ones. And Darrow actually didn't manage to spare the two from the death penalty through any particularly cunning wiles. Instead, much to the consternation of newspaper editorial writers, the trial judge basically ignored both Darrow and prosecutor Robert Crowe and declined to impose the death penalty because of the murderers' youth.

People who are looking for a thrilling true crime page-turner should probably stick to watching Rope or Compulsion, as this is a more scholarly account of the crime. If scholarly histories are your thing, though, this well-researched and generally well-written account is worth picking up.

(Just one note to the author: serious writers have a lifetime quota of three exclamation points, and you exceeded yours by about five. Really, save the exclamation points for e-mails or Twitter posts.) show less

This is a Must-Read for True Crime junkies, and especially if you are interested in the history of psychological/physical testimony in US trials. This book was so well-researched, well-written and absolutely fascinating. I kind of want to hate Clarence Darrow, but I'm also very impressed with his genius.

This book is very well-done historical writing. The author did a great job of making clear the perception of things like psychiatry, biology, and causation of the time period, which necessarily must inform our understanding of what happened and the outcome of the trials. For instance, I found it very disconcerting to read the testimony of the psychiatrists describing the defendants who then them diagnosed with "paranoid psychosis" when they are so clearly, nearly word-for-word, describing show more what we today would call "anti-social personality disorder" - but the concept wasn't even around yet. It's also interesting to see how differently (on both ends - the prosecution's and the defense's) culpability regarding mental illness was understood. Not to mention the interesting descriptions of the endocrine system!

I was interested in this as a piece of Chicago history (and as a fan of the movie Rope) but it was much better than I expected, especially after my last true-crime-history disappointment. show less

I first learned about this case from the musical Ragtime, so when I saw this book on Overdrive I thought it would be interesting to learn the whole story. It WAS interesting, and it's a timely read that deals with sexual assault, public opinion, and wealthy, powerful men. It's also kind of a bummer. But the writing style worked really well, making something that happened so long ago into a page turner.

I had a few frustrations with the author's note where it feels like the author was trying show more to defend Nesbit but still managed to imply that her account of her assault was questionable because she couldn't remember the exact day it happened and because she continued to see her rapist by choice afterwards. It felt victim blame-y and unnecessary. show less