True Crime

Name: True Crime
ISBN: 9781598530315

2008788 pagesThe Library of America

Americans have had an uneasy fascination with crime since the earliest European settlements in the New World, and right from the start true crime became a dominant genre in American writing. True Crime: An American Anthology offers the first comprehensive look at the many ways in which American writers have explored crime in a multitude of aspects: the dark motives that spur it, the shock of its impact on society, the effort to make sense of the violent extremes of human behavior. "The human community," as Harold Schechter notes in his introduction, "finding itself under assault from within, searches desperately for a framework or context to explain the apparently unexplainable."

Avg. reading time: 14h 55m
Prose complexity: 4/10

Dark Gritty

Harold Schechter

Harold Schechter is a professor of American literature and culture. Renowed for his true-crime writing, he is the author of the nonfiction books Fatal, Fiend, Bestial, Deviant, Deranged, Depraved, and, with David Everitt, The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. He is also the author of Nevermore and The Hum Bug, the acclaimed historical novels featuring Edgar Ellen Poe. He lives in New York State and is the father of YA novelist, Lauren Oliver. — Mostly from Depraved