Departments

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true crime

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    1/20/2023

    Truman Capote, True Crime, and Truth

    The author discovered that playing fast and loose with facts was more acceptable in fashionable literary circles than it was in court, though he escaped further reckoning for twisting his interviews with imprisoned men for sensational impact. 

  • SOURCE: Kansas City Star
    10/2/2022

    Sex, Society and Scandal in 19th Century France

    Historian Sarah Horowitz found the tale of Marguerite Steinheil too juicy to confine to an academic book, though the scandal shows how women navigated sex and inequality at the end of the nineteenth century. 

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    3/7/2022

    The Conservative and the Murderer

    Sarah Weinman's book on the friendship between William F. Buckley and convicted murderer Edgar Smith reveals uncomfortable truths about the balance of principle and self-interest in modern conservatism and the persistent tolerance of violence against women. 

  • SOURCE: Washington Post
    9/8/2021

    The Shocking Saga of the Murdaughs of South Carolina

    "People with power and money in such tribal regions can retain their hold on their ways — and their communities — for a long time. But corruption never strays far from the prideful and the powerful, especially among those who inherit privilege."

  • SOURCE: Vox
    7/23/2021

    Revisiting the 1976 Chowchilla School Bus Kidnapping

    The ordeal of 26 children and their school bus driver in California's San Joaquin Valley highlighted the conflicts between rural California and the state's urban centers, class conflict, and the rising fear of crime in 1976.