Review: Ressler, Burgess, Douglas, Sexual Homicide

Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives by Robert K. Ressler

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Back in the mid 80s, Robert Ressler and John Douglas started going around to prisons and interviewing convicted serial killers about what they'd done and why they'd done it. This is the fruit of that labor. It is at this point a historical artifact--behavioral profiling has, of course, gotten more nuanced and sophisticated than it was when it was being invented essentially from scratch. It is also a textbook, rather than a popular book (both Ressler and Douglas have written about the experience in their autobiographical works), so it does not make for compelling reading. I read it because I was curious about the actual results of the study which I'd seen referred to in a number of places.

At this point, their findings look like old hat, but they only look like old hat because of the effects of this study.



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Reivew: Douglas & Olshaker, Mind Hunter

Mind Hunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit by John E. Douglas

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Selection of case histories surrounded by light autobiography. Douglas/Olshaker makes a very personable narrator, though, because I'm me, I found the case histories more interesting than the autobiography. (And his sense of humor and mine don't match.) Douglas is naturally a fierce proponent of behavioral profiling and concentrates on cases where it is used successfully, although he does discuss the Green River Killer, who--at the time this book was written--didin't look like he was ever going to be caught. He's also very clear about what behavioral profiling is--not a magic trick, but an application of probabilities. It looks kind of like a magic trick when it works, especially when it works down to thing like speech impediments, but he goes step by step through the reasoning (rather like Holmes explaining his deductions to Watson), so that you can see how he got there every time. (I disagree with him about the identity of Jack the Ripper, but he was on a TV show and given bad data.)

This is a perfectly acceptable and readable book, neither better nor worse than the other profilers' autobiographies I've read (Ressler and Hazelwood).



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Review: Lindberg & Sykes, Shattered Sense of Innocence

Shattered Sense of Innocence: The 1955 Murders of Three Chicago Children by Richard C. Lindberg

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This is a not-very-good book about the Schuessler-Peterson murders of 1955 and the byzantine interconnections of Chicago-area criminals that eventually led to their (maybe) solution in the 1990s through an investigation into the disappearance of the candy heiress Helen Brach.

It's partly not Lindberg and Sykes' fault that the material of their book is hard to follow; the maze of informants and horse traders and stablehands and arsonists is inherently confusing. But I also think they could have done a better job of laying out the case against Kenneth Hansen--or of laying out the fault lines and failures in that case. They try to do both and succeed at neither.

They also have one of my personal hobby horses: sections from the viewpoints of the murder victims--also sections from the viewpoints of other people, including the chief ATF investigator (uncomfortably sentimental) and one of the informants, and maybe the problem with the book is most neatly encapsulated in the fact that this section is based on testimony that was hotly contested at Hansen's trial--testimony given by someone who admitted under oath that he was a liar--and which may in fact be a complete fabrication. So what is it doing as part of the narrative of the book, rather than merely part of Roger Spry's testimony? Lindberg and Sykes never explain why they've chosen to believe Spry, and at other points in the narrative, it doesn't seem like they do believe Spry. The same goes for the section from Herb Hollatz's PoV: the trial makes it clear that Hollatz's account may or may not be true, and the very end of the book suggests that Hollatz himself was the murderer.

This failure to distinguish clearly between things that are proven and things that are stated, likewise the failure to make clear the book's thesis--are they presenting the case for Hansen's guilt? for Hansen's innocence? are they doing a just-the-facts-ma'am presentation of the course of the investigation and trials?--make the book unsatisfying, although the subject matter was interesting enough that I finished it.



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Review: Glyn Jones (ed.), Women Who Kill

Women Who Kill by Richard Glyn Jones

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


An anthology of true crime writing, does what it says on the tin. (The headers tell me it was originally published as The Mammoth Book of Women Who Kill.) Glyn Jones has made no effort to find the most up-to-date--or most accurate--versions, so this really shouldn't be relied on as a source. The writing ranges from F. Tennyson Jesse, who is a treasure, to the pedestrian, to the overwrought Victorian. Glyn Jones himself contributed the essay on Rosemary West and proved that this would be a better collection if he'd done all the writing himself.

Interesting for breadth (Agrippina to Aileen Wuornos), a variety of murderers I had never heard of (Zeo Zoe Wilkins, Cordelia Botkin, Louise Vermilya), and the occasional museum piece (J. Edgar Hoover's version of Ma Barker), but extremely uneven in quality and overall disappointing.



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Review: Junger, Fire

Fire by Sebastian Junger

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A collection of Junger's essays and articles from 1992 to 2001. I most enjoyed the first two, which were about wildfires, but all of them were interesting and well-written and an odd series of postcards from the 1990s. Reading the last one was very discomfiting, because it was about Afghanistan and the Taliban and written before 9/11.



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Review: Carr, The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey

The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey by John Dickson Carr

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is interesting, a true crime novel twenty years before Capote wrote _In Cold Blood_. Carr's book is nothing like Capote's. It is about the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey in 1678 and also, because these things are inextricable, about the Popish Plot and Restoration politics and that dreadfully malevolent figure, Titus Oates.

(For my money, Titus Oates and Judge Jeffreys--who also appears in this novel, although as a lawyer, not a judge--are two of the most terrifying figures in English history. Oates is weirdly similar to the afflicted persons of Salem Village--less than twenty years later--in that he would denounce you as a Catholic traitor for the flimsiest of reasons, or for no reason at all, and because the men in authority followed him blindly despite every effort on the part of Oates' victims to make them see the truth.)

Carr writes with a cheerfully omniscient narrator and an encyclopedic knowledge of the time period he's talking about. As one would expect from a Golden Age mystery novelist who was rigorous about the fair play of his clues and solutions, his answer to the question Who murdered Sir Edmund Godfrey? is very plausible. It makes sense of all the weird features of the case, including why the murderer was never caught.



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Review: Spingola, Staggered Paths

Staggered Paths: Strange Deaths in the Badger State by Steven Spingola

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I really kind of love this book. By the looks of it it's self-published (either that or by a publishing house so small they have no budget for a copy-editor); Spingola is a functional rather than a graceful prose writer; and he can get a little self-righteous. But what he's doing is taking on the theory of the smiley face killer (young men keep drowning in Wisconsin and there is a theory that there is a serial killer at work); he goes one by one through the drowning deaths in La Crosse and other parts of Wisconsin and environs, and by looking at each case on its own merits, does a not bad job of proving that the only serial killer at work here is binge drinking. Which is to say that there is a pattern in these deaths, but it's not a pattern that you need a serial killer to explain. All you need is Wisconsin's binge drinking stats.



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Review: Borowitz, The Woman Who Murdered Black Satin

The Woman Who Murdered Black Satin: The Bermondsey Horror by Albert Borowitz

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


So the murder of Patrick O'Connor by Marie and Frederick Manning was a cause celebre back in 1849. The title refers to the urban legend that because Marie Manning wore black satin to her execution, she was so hated by London that black satin immediately went out of fashion and stayed that way for some time (years, in some accounts). Borowitz is having his cake and eating it, too, with this, because he digs around and proves that in fact no such thing happened. Marie Manning wore black satin to her execution, and people kept right on buying black satin.

This is a rather dry account of the murder, the pursuit of the suspects (Marie was found in Edinburgh, Frederick on the isle of Jersey), the trial, the execution, and the public reaction---though not as dry as Borowitz's book about the Thurtell case. Borowitz examines the evidence thoroughly and puts forward the theory that Marie Manning did not herself murder Patrick O'Connor, although she was clearly an accessory before and after the fact and had no qualms about stealing O'Connor's stocks and shares. Frederick is the one who confessed (she maintained her innocence all the way to the gallows), and therefore Frederick is the one who got to tell the story. Borowitz is right that Frederick's version loads the blame for everything on Marie, and right that there does seem to be a discrepancy between Frederick's confession and the witness statements, since taking them together requires Marie to be able to teleport. And he's right that in several significant ways, Marie did not get a fair trial (as distinct from actually being innocent).

Her contemporaries were convinced of her guilt (she is the model for the diabolical Mademoiselle Hortense in Dickens' Bleak House), and I think it's clear from the objective evidence that she was complicit in the plan from the beginning, whether she physically took part in the murder or not.



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Review: Jennings, Bosnia's Million Bones

Bosnia's Million Bones: Solving the World's Greatest Forensic Puzzle by Christian Jennings

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


What this book promises to be, in its subtitle "Solving the World's Greatest Forensic Puzzle," is a book about the forensics of exhuming the mass graves in Bosnia and putting dismembered body parts back together in the right way. What this book actually IS is a book about the institutional history of the ICMP (International Commission on Missing Persons). It is an interesting book, and I learned a lot about Bosnia and Serbia that I had not known, but it is not actually the book I signed up for.

Also, when I say it is an interesting book, I mean that the subject matter is interesting. Jennings is a dull writer, and his institutional history of the ICMP feels very institutional, and kind of just barely this side of PR put out by the ICMP itself. (Full disclosure: Jennings' bio says he is a former communications staffer of the ICMP.) I finished it largely because I kept hoping there would be more forensics in it somewhere and because the horrorshow of what happened in Bosnia is in its own dreadful way very compelling.



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Review: Guinn, Go Down Together

Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde by Jeff Guinn

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Excellent biography of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. Guinn is a really good writer and has done a lot of research, including getting access to the unpublished memoirs of Clyde's mother and youngest sister. He is empathetic with his subjects without at all sympathizing with them, and he's very clear-headed about Clyde's shortcomings as a criminal mastermind. He does find that Bonnie and Clyde's legendary devotion to each other was real; neither would leave the other, even when it was clearly in everyone's best interests for them to do so. He does a good job of bringing both Clyde and Bonnie to life without indulging in stunt writing, and I love the sections in his end notes where he talks about his various sources and their contradictions.



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Review: Erzinclioglu, Maggots, Murder & Men

Maggots, Murder, and Men: Memories and Reflections of a Forensic Entomologist by Zakaria Erzinçlioğlu

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


(He means "men" in the generic sense, because apparently he's still pretending that the default state of humanity is masculine. Or at least he's willing to do so for the alliteration.)

The subtitle is accurate: "Memories and Reflections of a Forensic Entomologist." This is a rambling sort of book, with sidebars on the flaws in the criminal justice system in the UK and how the world is getting more violent and nihilistic all the time and so on and so forth. Erzinclioglu is good at anecdotes, which is a plus since most of the book is anecdotal, and he's very good at talking about maggots. I read large chunks of this book with a mixture of revulsion and fascination, and I now know way more about flies than I'm entirely comfortable with.

I'd give this book three and a half stars, so we'll round up to four.



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Review: Brodie, No Man Knows My History

No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith by Fawn M. Brodie

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Fawn M. Brodie's No Man Knows My History is an excellent biography of Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism. It is a very secular biography, since she gives no room to the hypothesis that Joseph Smith was actually visited by an angel named Moroni, but she is scrupulously fair to her subject and explores the ways in which Smith came to believe in his own story and his own powers. She writes very clearly, with a clean, engaging prose style, and she's very very good at piecing together the mosaic of sources, Mormon and anti-Mormon, to create the most three-dimensional figure of Smith that she can. Although it is by now a very old biography (first edition 1945, second edition 1971) it is still eminently readable and justifiably a classic.



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Review: Van Noord, The King of Beaver Island

King of Beaver Island by Roger Van Noord

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


when Joseph Smith was lynched and Mormonism fragmented, one of those fragments was led by James Jesse Strang, who brought his followers eventually to Beaver Island in Lake Michigan, where they prospered and Strang played out a repeat of Joseph Smith's life with eerie exactitude, including embracing polygamy and getting involved in state politics and having himself crowned king and eventually being assassinated, at which point his kingdom, too, was dispersed. Van Noord is a competent writer and the material is fascinating.



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Review: Ewing, Insanity

Insanity: Murder, Madness, and the Law by Charles Patrick Ewing

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Review of ten murder trials in which the defendant pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity (Jacob Rubenstein [aka Jack Ruby], Robert Torsney, David Berkowitz, John Wayne Gacy, Jr., Arthur Shawcross, Scott Panetti, Eric Smith, Andrew Goldstein, Eric Michael Clark, Andrea Yates). "Insanity," I should note, is a legal term and has sometimes only a tangential relationship to mental illness; it's the inability to know the nature of one's actions (i.e., the inability to know that one's actions constitute homicide) and/or the inability to know that one's actions are wrong (for example, Andrea Yates knew she was murdering her children, but due to her mental illness, she believed she had to murder them to save them from Hell, so she did not know that her actions were wrong. Notice that there's a slippery point there around the word "know" and kinds of knowledge.). It's also worth noting that only in two cases was the defense successful (Torsney and Yates, and I sincerely doubt from Ewing's review of the case that Torsney was insane, or even mentally ill), even though, for example, Panetti's mental illness--and basic incompetency to stand trial--was excruciatingly obvious. Ewing talks about why the insanity plea fails: (a) legal insanity is very hard to prove, and (b) the inevitable battle of the expert witnesses. For every witness the defense finds to say the defendant is insane, the prosecution will find a witness--or two--to say the defendant isn't. Also, for some esoteric legal reason, jurors are not allowed to know the outcome of deciding a defendant is not guilty by reason of insanity, and often assume that it means the defendant will walk free, making them understandably reluctant to vote that way.

In essence, Ewing says, the insanity defense is a Hail Mary pass: it may not work, but in that situation, it's the only option for mounting any kind of defense at all.



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Jenkins, Mystics and Messiahs

Mystics and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History by Philip Jenkins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A quite interesting book about the last two hundred years or so of American religious history, from the perspective of the fringes. Jenkins observes that "cult" activity happens in cycles of expansion and backlash (he also points out that what people mean by the word "cult" is very poorly defined). He also talks about the very permeable barrier between fact and fiction, and the way that information about cults starts in one, moves to the other, then moves back to the first; an obvious charlatan can start a religious movement, and stories about cults are at least as important in the cultural history of cult activity as cults themselves. (He includes H. P. Lovecraft in his list of "Major Religious and Mystical Figures" born between 1874 and 1890, right along with Aimee Semple McPherson and Edgar Cayce.) The book is rather dry, but extremely thought-provoking.



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Review: Donovan, A Terrible Glory

A Terrible Glory: Custer and the Little Bighorn - the Last Great Battle of the American West by James Donovan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is not the best book I have read about the Battle of the Little Big Horn, but it does provide a good overview of how both sides, whites and Native Americans, got there and why. The writing was fine but not exciting, and Donovan certainly did his homework, though I regret that his discussion of different, often contradictory, sources was relegated to the endnotes; for me that's a fascinating part of the historiographical process and I would have liked to see more of it. I also wish he had not chosen to use the word "half-breed," with its derogatory connotations, to describe people of part-Native American descent; it jarred with his otherwise thoughtful discussion of the Native American side of the story.

Three and a half stars; round up to four for the work he did in synthesizing his sources.



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Review: Marquis, Keep the Last Bullet for Yourself

Keep the Last Bullet for Yourself: The True Story of Custer's Last Stand by Thomas B. Marquis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Thomas B. Marquis was a doctor who worked on the Cheyenne reservation in Montana in the 1920s, learned their sign language, and talked extensively with warriors who had fought at the Little Big Horn. Based on their accounts, he came up with a then-shocking theory: the men of the Seventh Cavalry had not fought a brave but doomed "last stand" action at the Little Big Horn, but rather had panicked and many of them had shot themselves (that being the meaning of the title). Subsequent researchers have tempered Marquis' assessment, but the idea that the defeat of the Seventh was caused by what archaeologist Richard Fox calls "tactical instability" is now accepted by, e.g., a popularizing historian like James Donovan, having come a long ways since the '30s, when Marquis couldn't find a publisher.



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Review: Scott, Connor, Willey, They Died with Custer

They Died With Custer: Soldiers’ Bones from the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Douglas D. Scott

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is a book about bones. Specifically, the bones of the men who died at the Little Bighorn in 1876. The authors, an archaeologist and two forensic scientists, are able to deduce quite a lot from the bones recovered during archaeologist excavations or discovered randomly on the battlefield. They identify five men (the identifications ranging from "well, it's a good guess" to 99.9% certainty), and they can tell a great deal about the troopers as a group: chronic lower back problems from horseback riding, terrible teeth, a variety of healed injuries that probably had to do with horses. (One of the archaeological studies quoted referred to "large mammal accidents," which I find charming.)

This book is full of tables and graphs and statistics and is drier than its punchy title would suggest. I found it fascinating, but . . . fair warning.



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Review: Barnett, Touched by Fire

Touched by Fire: The Life, Death, and Mythic Afterlife of George Armstrong Custer by Louise Barnett

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Barnett offers a panorama of George Armstrong Custer's life and the second half of the nineteenth century; she's interested as much in what happened to Custer's image after he died as she is in his life. She also gives nearly equal billing to Libbie Bacon Custer, who was professionally Custer's widow for over 50 years, accepting at face value Libbie's portrayal of herself in her writing, as timid, vulnerable, naive, and always madly in love with Custer. (Other biographers, like T. J. Stiles, are more skeptical.) This is an excellent read.



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Review: Stiles, Custer's Trials

Custer's Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America by T.J. Stiles

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is a scrutiny more than a biography. Stiles really gets dug in, particularly in talking about Custer's Civil War experience, and he talks extensively about the politics of the post-Civil War era and just what a mess Custer made of his attempts to wield power. He also tackles Custer's racism head-on---and Custer was a diehard white supremacist. Stiles' thesis, I think, is that there was only one thing in his life that George Armstrong Custer was good at---leading men into battle---and the bitter irony is that it's the same thing that killed him. Stiles also assumes that the persona Libbie Bacon Custer assumes in her writings---timid, naive, and vulnerable---is just that: a persona; the real Libbie was a shrewd manipulator whose love for her husband was real, but badly battered by his infidelities and his gambling. This book is dense but excellently well-written.



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Review: Michaud & Aynsesworth, Ted Bundy: Conversations with a Killer

Ted Bundy: Conversations with a Killer by Stephen G Michaud

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Transcripts of the interviews Michaud & Aynesworth conducted for their biography of Bundy, Only Living Witness. Interesting for two reasons: (1) Bundy, an intelligent and articulate man, trying to describe what it's like to be a serial killer; (2) the slow reveal that Bundy has been lying to Michaud & Aynesworth all along, both in relatively small ways, like denying his necrophilia, and in the biggest: he told them there was exculpatory evidence that proved he wasn't the "Ted" killer and sent them on wild goose chase after wild goose chase trying to find it. Even when Aynesworth confronts him head on, Bundy continues to claim his innocence. As is also evident in The Stranger Beside Me with Rule's relationship with Bundy, Bundy continued to try to manipulate Michaud & Aynesworth long after they were on to him. I particularly like him complaining that they aren't holding up their end of the bargain. Bundy was very good at gaslighting and moving goalposts, and without the transcripts of these interviews, he might have been able to string Michaud & Aynesworth along a lot longer, because it's the transcripts that allowed them to go back and compare what he actually had said with what he claimed he said.



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Review: Horn, The Restless Sleep

The Restless Sleep: Inside New York City's Cold Case Squad by Stacy Horn

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is an excellent book, written in 2004, about the NYPD Cold Case Squad. As I think I've mentioned before, I love cold case stories, and Horn does a fantastic job of following the case from the time the murder was reported to the time a cold case detective either finds the murderer or has to give up. (Or until she finished the book.) She's also just a great writer, someone whose prose it's enjoyable to spend time with, and she's very good at conveying the detectives who are her subjects. And she has the ability to tell anecdotes and make them meaningful, which is a rare talent indeed.



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Review: Faust, This Republic of Suffering

This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is a book about how the Civil War changed the way Americans dealt with death, both on the spiritual level and the intensely practical level of, we have all these dead bodies. What do we do with them? I found her most interesting when talking about the practicalities of burials (and reburials) and identifications and the way in which the modern armed forces ethos of bringing all soldiers home was born because of the problems created by this massive wall of death across the early 1860s, where you have civilian families on the one hand desperate to know what has become of their loved ones---are they alive? are the dead? where are their bodies?---and soldiers on the other trying to find ways to be sure that their families will receive that information. And the Army as an institution had nothing to do with it. It was up to volunteers and charitable workers and fellow soldiers to try to reconnect the broken tie. Sad and fascinating.



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Review: Titone, My Thoughts Be Bloody

My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry Between Edwin and John Wilkes Booth That Led to an American Tragedy by Nora Titone

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is not as good a biography of John Wilkes Booth as American Brutus; on the other hand, it is a very good collective biography of Junius Brutus Booth and his two most famous sons, Edwin and John Wilkes. Edwin, largely forgotten now, was the preeminent Shakespearean actor of his day---much more famous in his time than John Wilkes could ever hope to be, and this, Titone argues, is at the root of John Wilkes Booth's decision to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.

She's weakest, actually, on the assassination; although she believes JWB was a Confederate spy (a claim which Kauffman in American Brutus finds dubious), she doesn't provide any details about what JWB was allegedly doing for the Confederacy, and she skips over the lengthy and elaborate plotting that went on among JWB and his co-conspirators, just as she fails entirely to mention the trial for treason after JWB's death.

Her focus is very much on the intrafamilial tensions of the Booths, the poisonous legacy (I think, although Titone doesn't specifically argue) of their famous, unbalanced father. Titone does argue, and handiliy proves, that Edwin Booth's life was shaped and ruined by his adolescence as his father's keeper, and she seems to think that JWB's faults can be traced to the lack of a male role model (JBB being first continually on the road and then dead) and to the bitter relationship between JWB and Edwin, a back and forth of treachery and abandonment and a kind of passive-aggressive oneupsmanship that Edwin seems to have specialized in. Neither of them ever forgave the other for anything.

Titone seems to follow Asia Booth Clarke (who wrote memoirs of her father and her brothers) in feeling that JWB was just a rash, hot-headed boy. She certainly doesn't give him any of the credit for Machiavellianism that Kauffman does (although she does note his preternatural ability to talk people into things), and she doesn't do anything to bridge the gap between his outspoken embrace of the Confederate cause and the rather desperate place his life was in in the spring of 1865, and the moment he jumps out of the Lincolns' box and shouts Sic semper tyranis. She notes that nobody could understand the logic behind the assassination, but offers no explanation herself.

She's much stronger on Edwin than she is on JWB, probably because Edwin was a voluminous correspondent and left a lot more material, and she does a great job of describing the nineteenth-century American theatrical milieu in which they both moved.



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Review: Scott et al., Archaeological Perspectives on the Battle of the Little Bighorn

Archaeological Perspectives on the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Douglas D. Scott

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


One of the delightful things about used bookstores is that sometimes you find something you thought you'd never see. This book is one of those.

This book is the compiled results of the 1983-85 archaeological investigations at the two sites of the Battle of the Little Bighorn: the field where Custer and all of his men were killed and the hill where Reno and Benteen (mostly Benteen) kept their men together through a two-day siege. The archaeologists go over everything they found: human bones, animal bones, bullets, cartridge cases, buttons, tin cans, spurs, arrowheads, pocket knives ..., and they wring every last drop of information out of their finds. (One of the authors, Richard Fox, would go on to write one of my favorite books about the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Archaeology, History, and Custer's Last Battle, in which he uses the bullets and cartridge cases to trace the course of the battle; two others, Douglas Scott and Melissa Connor, with a third author, P. Willey, wrote They Died with Custer, about the human bones.) They discuss a number of mysteries and theories about the battle and bring their evidence to bear. Extractor failure is not supported as a major factor in the defeat; there is no evidence for mass suicide. The men who may or may not be buried in Deep Ravine, the archaeologists conclude, have been buried so deeply by the vagaries of erosion and deposition that metal detectors can't see them and the excavations they were able to do couldn't go deep enough to find them.

This is an academic book and is concommitantly dry, but it's an excellent snapshot of what archaeology does and a valuable factual perspective on the Battle of the Little Bighorn.



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Review: Wert, Custer

Custer by Jeffry D. Wert

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is not as good a biography as either Custer's Trials or Touched by Fire. Wert soft-pedals things, like Custer's racism, that Stiles faces head on, and he doesn't offer the kaleidoscopic view that Barnett does. He's also not as good a writer as either of them. (Also, I think he's wrong about what happened at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.) In general, he seems more concerned to paint Custer in a favorable light than I think the historical facts quite warrant.

This isn't by any means a bad biography; I've just read better.



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Review: Abel, John Wilkes Booth and the Women Who Loved Him

John Wilkes Booth and the Women Who Loved Him by E. Lawrence Abel

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is an interesting book with a terrible title.

It's half a biography of John Wilkes Booth and half biographies of the women who were involved with him: prostitutes, actresses, and a senator's daughter. It is not particularly academic in tone, although he's clearly done his research, especially in finding out what happened to all these women after Booth died, and it is neither feminist nor misogynistic (aside from some fat-shaming that should have been excised). He also argues that Booth had syphilis and that the mental effects of tertiary syphilis go a fair ways toward explaining why Booth assassinated President Lincoln. I don't know that I entirely believe him on that last part, but certainly his evidence that Booth had syphilis is convincing.

Worth checking out if you are interested either in Booth/the Lincoln assassination or in American theater of the second half of the nineteenth century.

Three and a half stars, round up to four.



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