The weather has been changeable lately and I found myself bogged down in a couple of books that I just haven't been able to make any progress with. I decided to revisit this set that has been on my living room shelves for the 20+ years that I lived in this apartment.
Non-fiction
Bloodletters And Bad Men - Jay Robert Nash
I'm going to approach these a little differently. It's a 3-volume set and they each deal with the same type of people - the murderers, robbers, assassins, kidnappers, etc. that have grabbed our attention since the country was established. Each volume deals with a different time period and the series is progressive. Nash has done thumb-nail portraits of his subjects and, in most cases, has been able to add a photo or illustration. Some are interesting, some are not, and some became repetitive after a while. These books have been described as an encyclopedia of crime and there are a lot of entries but I'm only going to mention the people that you might know. My only problem is that Nash lists his subjects alphabetically while I would've preferred chronologically.
Book 1, Captain Lightfoot to Jesse James ($4.95/$4.95/ copyright 1973, 415 pages, Paperback)
While Nash does bring up some early criminals, it doesn't get interesting until the entries from the "Wild West" era and the Civil War. He gives us Sam Bass, William "Billy the Kid" Bonny, and Jesse James as well as William Quantrill and his Raiders (including a separate entry for his Lieutenant William "Bloody Bill" Anderson). We get the Gunfight at the OK Corral and we get the story of Herman Webster Mudgett AKA H. H. Holmes who created the "Murder Castle" in Chicago during the Chicago Worlds Fair of1893.
Book 2, Butch Cassidy to Al Capone ($4.95/$4.95, copyright 1973, 431 pages, Paperback)
Here Nash brings us up into the 20's and 30's and introduces us to other criminal activity. Now we get Bootleggers, Bank robbers, Gangsters and Swindlers. He gives us Legs Diamond, John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Machine Gun Kelly, and Baby Face Nelson. We get Bonnie and Clyde and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. We get Al Capone, the Black Hand, and the Mafia. And he gives us Leopold and Loeb and Charles Ponzi.
Book 3, Lucky Luciano to Charles Manson ($4.95/$4.95, copyright 1973, 423 pages, Paperback)
Nash moves us up into the 40's to 60's by adding Racketeers, Mafia Chiefs, and assassins. The mobsters include Joe Bonanno, Carmine Galante, Joe Gallo, Vito Genovese, Sam Giancana, and Lucky Luciano. We get Bruno Hauptmann. He gives us the assassins Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray, and Sirhan Sirhan. We get the mass killers Richard Speck and Charles Whitman. As a bonus, he gives us Willy Sutton.
There are a lot of other fascinating people here and I understand that Nash has updated his work as 1 volume with new material. I read them straight through although, I have to admit, by the 3rd volume I was getting bored. This is probably something you might just want to pick and choose what you want. Still, I enjoyed it.
Thanksgiving is next week and Then we get Christmas. I did all my shopping online and the last present should be in next week. Now I have to figure out the best way to wrap this stuff. Maybe just gift bags this year.
Enjoy the Holidays, keep warm, and ….
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