Bill James - Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence

Category: Misc. Non-fiction, True Crime
Language: English
Keywords: Arts & Entertainment

Written by Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence
Read by Kyle Tait
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 128 Kbps

Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence
By: Bill James
Narrated by: Kyle Tait
Length: 21 hrs and 32 mins
Unabridged Audiobook
Release date: 12-26-23
Language: English
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Publisher’s summary

From the one-of-a-kind mind of Bill James, famous for revolutionizing the way we think about baseball, comes a “thought-provoking meditation” (Seattle Times) and epic tour through American crime.

The man who revolutionized the way we think about baseball examines our cultural obsession with murder—delivering a unique, engrossing, brilliant history of tabloid crime in America.

Celebrated writer and contrarian Bill James has voraciously read true crime throughout his life and has been interested in writing a book on the topic for decades. With Popular Crime, James takes listeners on an epic journey from Lizzie Borden to the Lindbergh baby, from the Black Dahlia to O. J. Simpson, explaining how crimes have been committed, investigated, prosecuted and written about, and how that has profoundly influenced our culture over the last few centuries—even if we haven’t always taken notice.

Exploring such phenomena as serial murder, the fluctuation of crime rates, the value of evidence, radicalism and crime, prison reform and the hidden ways in which crimes have shaped, or reflected, our society, James chronicles murder and misdeeds from the 1600s to the present day. James pays particular attention to crimes that were sensations during their time but have faded into obscurity, as well as still-famous cases, some that have never been solved, including the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Boston Strangler and JonBenet Ramsey. Satisfyingly sprawling and tremendously entertaining, Popular Crime is a professed amateur’s powerful examination of the incredible impact crime stories have on our society, culture and history.

©2023 Bill James (P)2023 Simon & Schuster Audio