Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence - Hardcover

"James is a rare combination of amateur logician and sociologist, stylist, humorist, and stern moralist."--"Time"

"Some people think Bill James is God. They overstate, but not by much."--"Vanity Fair"

"A very entertaining book, and it will instigate arguments even as it scores many important points."--"The""Washington Post"

"An engagingly written history of well-publicized deadly crimes."--"Pittsburgh Post-Gazette"

For true-crime afficianados, this book is a hoot. James has to be the least starchy serious writer I've run across in years. He has the gift of writing the way a person talks--no easy task, believe me--giving Popular Crime a folksy, conversational feel."--"The New York Times Book Review"

"Running through Popular Crime is an exploration of the enduring popularity of true crime. James' thought-provoking meditations elevate his book far above any routine recitation of facts."--"The Seattle Times"

"[An] insightfully unorthodox history of famous murders."--"New York" magazine

"The book is a success, thoughtful and thought provoking. It is also gruesome, ghoulish, and appalling--and utterly fascinating."--"The Daily Beast"

"Great, cozy bedtime reading."--Gillian Flynn, author of "Gone Girl"

"James turns out to be not just the most important writer/thinker on baseball of our generation but also completely unexpectedly to have read more books in the true crime genre than maybe anyone else alive. In "Popular Crime" he works his way though every major true crime story of the last 200 years from Lizzie Borden to JonBenet Ramsey making (as one would expect) all kinds of brilliant, wildly entertaining and occasionally completely nutty Jamesian observations." Malcolm Gladwell
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The man who revolutionized the way we think about baseball now 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. Now, with Popular Crime, James takes readers 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.