A review by taste_of_mace
The Crime Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained by Shanna Hogan
3.0
Overall, this book was a good read. I liked how it broke down stories into digestible sizes, and generally did a good job of summarizing details. However, I was a little disappointed in a couple of things.
First of all, some of the book was particularly difficult to read, and I found the writing style wasn't always very easy to comprehend.
Secondly, specifically with the Frank Abignale and Jeffrey Dahmer sections, I was disappointed at the length of the entries. Frank Abignale was such a brilliant man, and as I recently read his autobiography, I was disappointed that the summary skimmed over a lot of his very interesting life. With Jeffrey Dahmer, I felt the summary did that as well as left out information that was particularly damaging, as police returned a 14-year-old victim (who they found naked with a hole drilled into his skull) to Dahmer who claimed he was an adult lover of his. Considering this child was a POC, this act can be seen as discriminatory against visible minorities and the LGBT+ community. Jeffrey Dahmer was so damaging to the gay community, and his sexuality or that he targeting gay men and boys was not mentioned at all in the strikingly short section of the book. This felt like erasure of important context for his killings, and I didn't appreciate that this very notable and wide-known part of Dahmer's story was left out of the book.
Lastly, I was just sort of confused as to why Caesar wasn't in the assassinations section of the book....wouldn't he have been a more obvious choice than the first two people that were included?
Other than all of that, I found I learned some interesting things, and I thought the book did well at giving a broad overview of various crimes throughout history, and did well at focusing not just on North American crime (which is often more publicized in my experience).
First of all, some of the book was particularly difficult to read, and I found the writing style wasn't always very easy to comprehend.
Secondly, specifically with the Frank Abignale and Jeffrey Dahmer sections, I was disappointed at the length of the entries. Frank Abignale was such a brilliant man, and as I recently read his autobiography, I was disappointed that the summary skimmed over a lot of his very interesting life. With Jeffrey Dahmer, I felt the summary did that as well as left out information that was particularly damaging, as police returned a 14-year-old victim (who they found naked with a hole drilled into his skull) to Dahmer who claimed he was an adult lover of his. Considering this child was a POC, this act can be seen as discriminatory against visible minorities and the LGBT+ community. Jeffrey Dahmer was so damaging to the gay community, and his sexuality or that he targeting gay men and boys was not mentioned at all in the strikingly short section of the book. This felt like erasure of important context for his killings, and I didn't appreciate that this very notable and wide-known part of Dahmer's story was left out of the book.
Lastly, I was just sort of confused as to why Caesar wasn't in the assassinations section of the book....wouldn't he have been a more obvious choice than the first two people that were included?
Other than all of that, I found I learned some interesting things, and I thought the book did well at giving a broad overview of various crimes throughout history, and did well at focusing not just on North American crime (which is often more publicized in my experience).