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American Murder
By Mike Mayo. 2008
Investigating the way Hollywood scoops up notorious criminals and turns them into legends, this entertaining who's-who guide provides thumbnail sketches…
of such killers as Ma Barker, Black Beard, Al Capone, John Wesley Hardin, and Charles Starkweather. Noting that some figures are glamorized in popular culture (Jesse James), while others are demonized (Charles Manson), this encyclopedic collection explores the legends' emotional truths as depicted in movies, stories, and songs. Facts of the real cases behind these notorious criminals are also presented, including the landmark rulings that pioneered new approaches to criminal justice.Blood Aces
By Doug Swanson. 2014
The astonishing story of Benny Binion--a rip-roaring saga of murder, money, and the making of Las Vegas Benny Binion was…
many things: a cowboy, a pioneering casino owner, a gangster, a killer, and founder of the hugely successful World Series of Poker. Blood Aces tells the story of Binion's crucial role in shaping modern Las Vegas. From a Texas backwater, Binion rose to prominence on a combination of vision, determination, and brutal expediency. His formula was simple: run a good business, cultivate the big boys, kill your enemies, and own the cops. Through a mix of cold-bloodedness, native intelligence, folksiness, and philanthropy, Binion became one of the most revered figures in the history of gambling, and his showmanship, shrewdness, and violence would come to dominate the Vegas scene. Veteran journalist Doug J. Swanson uses once-secret government documents and dogged reporting to show how Binion destroyed his rivals and outsmarted his adversaries--including J. Edgar Hoover. As fast paced as any thriller, Blood Aces tells a story that is unmatched in the annals of American criminal justice, a vital yet untold piece of this country's history.Gun, Needle, Spoon
By Patrick O'Neil. 2015
This memoir follows a punk rock pioneer on his slide into drug abuse and life as an armed robber, all…
the way through life in recovery and what it's like to look back on those times, knowing all the while that he is still under the threat of three strikes, a twenty-five-to-life prison sentence waiting. He has no choice but to deal with it all drug free.During punk rock's heyday, Patrick O'Neil worked at the San Francisco's legendary Mabuhay Gardens. He went on to become the road manager for Dead Kennedys and Flipper, as well as T.S.O.L. and the Subhumans. He holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles.King Con: The Bizarre Adventures of the Jazz Age's Greatest Impostor
By Paul Willetts. 2018
The spellbinding tale of hustler Edgar Laplante the king of Jazz Age con artists who becomes…
the victim of his own dangerous game Edgar Laplante was a smalltime grifter an erstwhile vaudeville performer and an unabashed charmer But after years of playing thankless gigs and traveling with medicine shows he decided to undertake the most demanding and bravura performance of his life In the fall of 1917 Laplante reinvented himself as Chief White Elk war hero sports star civil rights campaigner Cherokee nation leader and total fraud Under the pretenses of raising money for struggling Native American reservations Laplante dressed in buckskins and a feathered headdress and traveled throughout the American West narrowly escaping exposure and arrest each time he left town When the heat became too much he embarked upon a lucrative continent-hopping tour that attracted even more enormous crowds his cons growing in proportion to the adulation of his audience As he moved through Europe he spied his biggest mark on the Riviera a prodigiously rich Hungarian countess who was instantly smitten with the con man The countess bankrolled a lavish trip through Italy that made Laplante a darling of the Mussolini regime and a worldwide celebrity soaring to unimaginable heights on the wings of his lies But then at the pinnacle of his improbable success Laplante s overreaching threatened to destroy him In King Con Paul Willetts brings this previously untold story to life in all its surprising absurdity showing us how our tremendous capacity for belief and our longstanding obsession with celebrity can make fools of us all and proving that sometimes truth is stranger than fictionLes reines du crime organisé Le Monde secret des femmes gangsters
By Sonia Broyart, Jerry Bader. 2018
Les reines du crime organisé Le Monde secret des femmes gangsters Du curieux univers des clans de motardes japonaises à…
l'ascension puis à la chute des Quarante Éléphants de Londres, l'histoire du crime organisé féminin est à la fois fascinante et étrange. Voici les histoires, vraies ou légendaires de femmes chef de gang qui ont brisé le mythe de la douceur féminine. Voici Le Monde secret des femmes gangsters.Visiting Hours
By Amy Butcher. 2015
In this powerful and unforgettable memoir, award-winning writer Amy Butcher examines the shattering consequences of failing a friend when she…
felt he needed one most. Four weeks before their college graduation, twenty-one-year-old Kevin Schaeffer walked Amy Butcher to her home in their college town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Hours after parting ways with Amy, he fatally stabbed his ex-girlfriend, Emily Silverstein. While he was awaiting trial, psychiatrists concluded that he had suffered an acute psychotic break. Although severely affected by Kevin's crime, Amy remained devoted to him as a friend, believing that his actions were the direct result of his untreated illness. Over time, she became obsessed--determined to discover the narrative that explained what Kevin had done. The tragedy deeply shook her concept of reality, disrupted her sense of right and wrong, and dismantled every conceivable notion she'd established about herself and her relation to the world. Eventually realizing that she would never have the answers, or find personal peace, unless she went after it herself, Amy returned to Gettysburg--the first time in three years since graduation--to sift through hundreds of pages of public records: mental health evaluations, detectives' notes, inventories of evidence, search warrants, testimonies, and even Kevin's own confession.Visiting Hours is Amy Butcher's deeply personal, heart-wrenching exploration of how trauma affects memory and the way a friendship changes and often strengthens through seemingly insurmountable challenges. Ultimately, it's a testament to the bonds we share with others and the profound resilience and strength of the human spirit.Crime Seen
By Kate Lines. 2013
A criminal profiler, trained at Quantico, former Chief Superintendent of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) Kate Lines recounts her remarkable…
story using pivotal cases she worked on in the course of her career. How does a farm girl from Ennismore enter a male-dominated field and become a top criminal profiler and groundbreaking leader? For Kate Lines, it started humbly, patrolling highways. She learned quickly that the best way to thrive was to keep calm, carry on and never lose her sense of humour. In what would be the first of many dramatic turns in her career, Kate traded in her uniform for a tight miniskirt and a leather jacket, becoming one of the OPP's first female undercover officers. In 1990 came the opportunity of a lifetime: to be chosen as the 2nd-ever Canadian in an elite program at Quantico, Virginia in what was then the emerging field of criminal profiling. After 10 months of an intensive education in the intricacies of violent crime, Kate's new skills made her much in demand back home. Over the years she was involved in a number of high-profile cases, such as the abduction and murder of Kristen French and of Tori Stafford and the disappearance of Michael Dunahee. Kate was an early proponent of ViCLAS--the Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System, and when she took charge of the new and massive Behavioural Sciences division in Orillia, she took over ViCLAS and turned the department into a hub of innovation. Kate was awarded a Governor General's medal for being in the top 1/10th of 1% of the members of police forces that year. The following year the Canadian Police Leadership Foundation named her Police Leader of the Year. Always taking care not to aggrandize in any way the criminals whose names we may know all too well, Kate feels it's much more important to focus on the courage of victims and their families. Kate is an unsung, groundbreaking Canadian woman, one of a kind in this country, with a unique, inspiring and fascinating story to share.Eliot Ness
By Douglas Perry. 2014
The story of Eliot Ness, the legendary lawman who led the Untouchables, took on Al Capone, and saved a city's…
soulAs leader of an unprecedented crime-busting squad, twenty-eight-year-old Eliot Ness won fame for taking on notorious mobster Al Capone. But the Untouchables' daring raids were only the beginning of Ness's unlikely story.This new biography grapples with the charismatic lawman's complicated, largely forgotten legacy. Perry chronicles Ness's days in Chicago as well as his spectacular second act in Cleveland, where he achieved his greatest success: purging the profoundly corrupt city and forging new practices that changed police work across the country. He also faced one of his greatest challenges: a mysterious serial killer known as the Torso Murderer. Capturing the first complete portrait of the real Eliot Ness, Perry brings to life an unorthodox man who believed in the integrity of law and the power of American justice.acclaim and scandal from both his professional and personal lives. Through it all, he believed unwaveringly in the integrity of law and the basic goodness of his fellow Americans.Worse than the Devil
By Dean A Strang. 2013
In 1917 a bomb exploded in a Milwaukee police station, killing nine officers and a civilian. Those responsible never were…
apprehended, but police, press, and public all assumed that the perpetrators were Italian. Days later, eleven alleged Italian anarchists went to trial on unrelated charges involving a fracas that had occurred two months before. Against the backdrop of World War I, and amidst a prevailing hatred and fear of radical immigrants, the Italians had an unfair trial. The specter of the larger, uncharged crime of the bombing haunted the proceedings and assured convictions of all eleven. Although Clarence Darrow led an appeal that gained freedom for most of the convicted, the celebrated lawyers methods themselves were deeply suspect. The entire case left a dark, if hidden, stain on American justice. Largely overlooked for almost a century, the compelling story of this case emerges vividly in this meticulously researched book by Dean A. Strang. In its focus on a moment when patriotism, nativism, and terror swept the nation, Worse than the Devil exposes broad concerns that persist even today as the United States continues to struggle with administering criminal justice to newcomers and outsiders.Betrayal: The Story of Aldrich Ames, an American Spy
By Tim Weiner, David Johnston, Neil A. Lewis. 1995
The inside story of the biggest molehunt in the history of American intelligence: the search for and discovery by three…
New York Times journalists of Aldrich Ames, who was paid by the Soviets for years to spy in America.The Law Society of Upper Canada and Ontario's Lawyers, 1797-1997
By Christopher Moore. 1997
At the end of the eighteenth century, when ten lawyers gathered in what is now Niagara-on-the-Lake to form the Law…
Society of Upper Canada, they were creating something new in the world: a professional organization with statutory authority to control its membership and govern its own affairs. Today's Law Society of Upper Canada, with more than 25,000 members, still wields these powers. Marking the bicentennial of the society's foundation, Christopher Moore's history begins by exploring the unprecedented step taken in 1797 and follows the evolution of lawyers' work and the idea of professional autonomy through two hundred years of growth and change.The Law Society of Upper Canada and Ontario's Lawyers is a broad-ranging story of the growth and development of the Law Society and the legal profession, from the days when horseback barristers travelled the backwoods by horseback, through the reforms of the late nineteenth century to the period of reaction between the two world wars and the long struggle of women and minorities for access to and equity in the legal profession. Writing in a style that is scholarly as well as entertaining, Moore traces to the present a story rich in personalities, and shows how, after a period of tremendous growth and change, questions of governance, legal aid, and practice insurance triggered a series of crises that rocked the society to its foundations.This is the first study to be based on full access to the society's two hundred years of historical records. Moore, who has organized his research into themes and periods to illuminate the story, also includes new material on the lives and careers of Ontario lawyers and on the place of the Law Society in professional and public life. Readable and extensively illustrated, The Law Society of Upper Canada and Ontario's Lawyers shows that such issues as professional autonomy and the internal organization, at the forefront of debate at the society's inception, continue to dominiate discussions today.Brian Dickson
By Kent Roach, Robert J. Sharpe. 1948
When Brian Dickson was appointed in 1973, the Supreme Court of Canada was preoccupied with run-of-the-mill disputes. By the time…
he retired as Chief Justice of Canada in 1990, the Court had become a major national institution, very much in the public eye. The Court's decisions, reforming large areas of private and public law under the Charter of Rights, were the subject of intense public interest and concern.Brian Dickson played a leading role in this transformation. Engaging and incisive, Brian Dickson: A Judge's Journey traces Dickson's life from a Depression-era boyhood in Saskatchewan, to the battlefields of Normandy, the boardrooms of corporate Canada and high judicial office, and provides an inside look at the work of the Supreme Court during its most crucial period. Dickson's journey was an important part of the evolution of the Canadian judiciary and of Canada itself. Sharpe and Roach have written an accessible biography of one of Canada's greatest legal figures that provides new insights into the work of Canada's highest court.Sir John Beverley Robinson: Bone and Sinew of the Compact
By Patrick Brode. 1904
John Beverley Robinson (1791-1863) was one of Upper Canada's foremost jurists, a dominating influence on the ruling élite, and a…
leading citizen of nineteenth-century Toronto who owned a vast tract of land on which Osgoode Hall now stands. The loyalists had founded a colony firm in its devotion to the Crown, with little room for dissent. As a true loyalist son, educated by John Strachan, Robinson attempted to steer Upper Canada toward emulation of what he perceived to be Britain's ideal aristocratic society. As a young ensign in the York militia, he defended his sovereign at Queenston Heights, and as acting attorney-general he prosecuted traitors who threatened to undermine the colony. Later, as attorney-general and de facto leader of the assembly during the 1820s, he tried to mould the government to the British form. But factors he never understood--the influence of American democracy and liberalism in the Colonial Office--ensured that Upper Canada would never be a 'new Albion. ' Robinson was appointed chief justice in 1829, and his judicial career spanned thirty-three years, during which he insisted the courts were subservient to the legislature and established precedents declaring their role should be limited to the enforcement of existing laws, with no independent creative function. His long service on the bench represented both a preservation and a strengthening of the British tradition in Canadian law. In this biography, early Toronto comes alive through the eyes of a powerful man--firm in his beliefs, attractive to women, respected by his fellows--who sought to mould society to his own ideals. For historians, lawyers, and students of jurisprudence who seek an understanding of the roots of legal practice in nineteenth-century Ontario, it is essential reading.Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court (Cornerstones of Freedom)
By Deborah Kent. 1997
Saboteurs
By Chris Hedges, Andrew Nikiforuk. 2014
At Trickle Creek in northern Alberta, Wiebo Ludwig thought he'd buffered his tiny religious community from civilization, but in 1990…
civilization came calling. A Calgary oil company proposed to drill directly in view of the farm's communal dining room. Ludwig wrote letters, petitioned, forced public hearings, and discovered the provincial regulator cared little about landowners. After the oil company accidentally vented raw sour gas, Ludwig's wife miscarried. Hostilities against the oil company began with nails on the roads, sabotaged well sites, and road blockades. They culminated in death threats, shootings, and bombings. The RCMP recruited a Ludwig acolyte as an informant, and in an attempt to establish the man's credibility the police themselves blew up an equipment shack. Ludwig was charged with 19 counts of mischief, vandalism, and possession of explosives, and he was later convicted on five charges. This taut work of nonfiction, first published in 2002, won both a Governor General's Award and the Arthur Ellis Award for True Crime Writing. With the escalation of oil and gas extraction over the past decade, the unsettling questions Saboteurs raises about individual rights, corporate power, police methods, and government accountability are more relevant than ever.Texas Death Row
By Bill Crawford. 2008
A chilling catalog of the men and women who have paid the ultimate price for their crimes The death…
penalty is one of the most hotly contested and longest-standing issues in American politics and no place is more symbolic of that debate than Texas Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1977 Texas has put more than 390 prisoners to death far more than any other state Texas Death Row puts faces to those condemned men and women with stark details on their crimes sentencing last meals and last words Definitive and objective Texas Death Row will provide ample fuel for readers on both sides of the death penalty debateWanted!: Wanted Posters of the Old West
By Barbara Fifer, Martin Kidston. 2014
This rare collection of wanted posters from the American West is a historical treasure. The book's nearly 150 original wanted…
posters, fugitive notices, and Pinkerton Agency circulars are supplemented by fascinated details about the technology of identification, the history of wanted posters, and the stories behind the crimes, which ranged from horse theft, safe blowing, train robbery, seduction, ''white slavery,'' and murder. Posters for notorious bandits such as Jesse James, Butch Cassidy, and the Sundance Kid are also featured.Noticia de un secuestro
By Gabriel García Márquez. 1996
¡Disponible por primera vez en eBook!La crónica de un secuestro real magistralmente retratado por Gabriel García Márquez. En 1990, temiendo…
la extradición a Estados Unidos, Pablo Escobar --cabecilla del cartel de Medellín-- secuestroì a diez conocidos colombianos para usarlos como moneda de cambio. Con el ojo de un poeta, Gabriel García Márquez describe la peligrosa prueba de los secuestrados y el increíble drama de las negociaciones para su liberación. También muestra el dolor de Colombia después de casi cuarenta años de revolución guerrillera, sicarios, crisis económica y narcodemocracia. Con intensidad cinematográfica, lenguaje impresionante y rigor periodístico, García Márquez evoca la enfermedad que afecta a su amado país y muestra coìmo penetra cada estrato social, desde el más humilde campesino hasta el mismo presidente.Contraband
By Michael Kwass. 2014
Louis Mandrin led a gang of bandits who brazenly smuggled contraband into eighteenth-century France. Michael Kwass brings new life to…
the legend of this Gallic Robin Hood and the thriving underworld he helped to create. Decades before the storming of the Bastille, surging world trade excited a revolution in consumption that transformed the French kingdom. Contraband exposes the dark side of this early phase of globalization, revealing hidden connections between illicit commerce, criminality, and popular revolt. France's economic system was tailor-made for an enterprising outlaw like Mandrin. As French subjects began to crave colonial products, Louis XIV lined the royal coffers by imposing a state monopoly on tobacco from America and an embargo on brilliantly colored calico cloth from India. Vigorous black markets arose through which traffickers fed these exotic goods to eager French consumers. Flouting the law with unparalleled panache, Mandrin captured widespread public attention to become a symbol of a defiant underground. This furtive economy generated violent clashes between gangs of smugglers and customs agents in the borderlands. Eventually, Mandrin was captured by French troops and put to death in a brutal public execution intended to demonstrate the king's absolute authority. But the spectacle only cemented Mandrin's status as a rebel folk hero in an age of mounting discontent. Amid cycles of underground rebellion and agonizing penal repression, the memory of Mandrin inspired ordinary subjects and Enlightenment philosophers alike to challenge royal power and forge a movement for radical political change.A Beautiful Child: A True Story Of Hope, Horror, And An Enduring Human Spirit
By Matt Birkbeck. 2005
Sharon Marshall was a brilliant and beautiful student whose future was filled with promise. But her murderous, fugitive father had…
drawn her into a lifetime of deception that became one of the most baffling cases in the annals of American crime.