OVER MY DEAD BODY: The Sensational Age of the American Paperback: 1945-1955 by Lee Server looks at the period when paperbacks switched from tasteful covers not that different from hardbacks to the lurid covers that promised (and occasionally delivered) equally lurid stories of drug addiction, juvenile delinquency (pointing out how many JD books came out reminds me, again, how odd it is Halberstam skipped that topic in The Fifties), crime and lesbianism (intended for the male reader but drawing a lot of lesbian fans) plus the occasional serious work. Not as deep in the topic as Two-Bit Culture but a fun read, well illustrated.
JUNK SCIENCE AND THE AMERICAN CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM by M. Chris Fabricant (who works in his day job as an attorney for the Innocence Project) tackles a topic I’ve read about previously, that forensic evidence is nowhere near as slam-dunk as TV makes it look. Fabricant’s primary focus is forensic dentistry because the idea bite marks can be traced to a single suspect’s mouth has been thoroughly discredited. The book shows how dentists went from identifying corpses by their teeth (which is legit) to the more glamorous but speculative world of identifying rapists and killers from their teeth marks. The rise and fall of forensic dentistry and the many innocent people it convicted form the tentpole of the book though it covers other topics such as hair analysis and partial fingerprints. Grimly depressing about how flawed our legal system is and how easily this kind of bullshit can slip in.
SHAKESPEARE ALIVE by Joseph Papp and Elizabeth Kirkland looks at Elizabethan England and the society Shakespeare wrote for — proud, xenophobic, often financially strapped, frequently ribald, far more literate than previous generations — the theater of his day and how Shakespeare’s fared on stage in the centuries since. This included enough stuff that was new to me to be worth the reading. Below, Tom Hiddleston as Prince Hal in The Hollow Crown.
THIEVES’ KITCHEN: The Regency Underworld by Donald A. Low looks at the Regency as the last era before modern justice systems developed. It was an age when the main law-enforcement was the typically elderly parish watchman and professional prosecutors didn’t exist — if you wanted the person who robbed you put on trial, you had to become the prosecutor yourself. The public and the country’s leaders equated professional policing with Napoleon’s state police in France, jackbooted thugs ready to repress freedom for the benefit of the state.
Small wonder that crime flourished. Murder. Robbery, ranging from picking pockets to housebreaking. Forgery. Fraud. Sex work. Public drunkenness. Gambling, which wasn’t illegal but the potential for a businessman or Jewish money-lender to take ownership of an aristocrat’s estate greatly worried the powers that be. And bodysnatching, as personified by Burke and Hare (who appeared on screen in The Flesh and the Fiends). As detailed in The Italian Boy, modern policing and jurisprudence would soon change that, but for a while, the wild life of London was wild indeed.
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