Research Catalog

Title

Murder in America : a history / Roger Lane.

Author

Lane, Roger.

Publication

Columbus : Ohio State University Press, c1997.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

ix, 399 p. : ill.; 24 cm.

Summary

• This book is the first serious study of the history of criminal homicide in America, reaching from precolonial times to the age of the O.J. Simpson trial. Noted historian Roger Lane provides this much-needed overview of the history of murder and our culture's responses to it. Lane demonstrates that the study of murder can provide important clues about the way society actually works, its fears and tensions, its concept of justice, and the value it places on different kinds of human life.
• Roger Lane simply asks the same questions of the past that we ask of the present: What causes murder rates to go up or down? How efficiently or fairly has the justice system worked in dealing with homicide? What are or have been the roles of economic difference and family structure, of the courts and the media, of the Wild West and the urban Industrial Revolution, of Indian warfare and African-American slavery? But if the questions are familiar, Lane shows us that the answers cannot be fitted neatly into boxes we now label either "liberal" or "conservative." They will surprise most readers.

Series Statement

The history of crime and criminal justice series

Uniform Title

The history of crime and criminal justice series.

Subject

Murder > United States > History

Genre/Form

History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 355-365) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Introduction: The Historian as Detective -- 1. The British Background -- 2. The Colonial Era, 1607-1776 -- 3. The American Revolution and the Early Republic, 1776-1829 -- 4. The Antebellum Decades and the Civil War, 1829-1865 -- 5. The Civil War to World War I, 1865-1917 -- 6. World War I to World War II, 1917-1941 -- 7. World War II to the Vietnam War, 1941-1963 -- 8. The Sixties, 1963-1974 -- 9. Murder in Contemporary America, 1974 to the Present: A Historical Perspective.

ISBN

• 0814207324 (alk. paper)
• 0814207332 (pbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

^^^96039626^

OCLC

• 35910418
• SCSB-10383372

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library