Moorlock reviewed Popular crime by James, Bill
Review of 'Popular crime' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
[a:Bill James|12126|Bill James|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1245180445p2/12126.jpg] has read a whole lot of true-crime books. [b:Popular Crime|9507382|Popular Crime Reflections on the Celebration of Violence|Bill James|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327920118s/9507382.jpg|14393063] summarizes the crimes in these books (almost all of them murders), in roughly chronological order, and comments a little bit also about how certain varieties of crime caught the public eye at different periods.
He makes nods at making the book more than just a catalog of the lurid, but his analyses of how the criminal justice system has changed, of cultural attitudes toward crime and criminals, and of the popularity of crime stories and what this can tell us, all are pretty superficial and unenlightening. He's pretty clearly obsessed about this topic and so his opinions are better-informed and wider-ranging than those of the average guy on the bar stool next to you, but they're made of the same basic stuff. He develops an opinion or educated guess …
[a:Bill James|12126|Bill James|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1245180445p2/12126.jpg] has read a whole lot of true-crime books. [b:Popular Crime|9507382|Popular Crime Reflections on the Celebration of Violence|Bill James|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327920118s/9507382.jpg|14393063] summarizes the crimes in these books (almost all of them murders), in roughly chronological order, and comments a little bit also about how certain varieties of crime caught the public eye at different periods.
He makes nods at making the book more than just a catalog of the lurid, but his analyses of how the criminal justice system has changed, of cultural attitudes toward crime and criminals, and of the popularity of crime stories and what this can tell us, all are pretty superficial and unenlightening. He's pretty clearly obsessed about this topic and so his opinions are better-informed and wider-ranging than those of the average guy on the bar stool next to you, but they're made of the same basic stuff. He develops an opinion or educated guess about something, tells you what it is, and gives you a just-so story for why he's right.
