Bloodletters and Badmen: A Narrative Encyclopedia of American Criminals from the Pilgrims to the Present, by Jay Robert Nash (oversize HC, 1973, 640 pages, $5)
Holy cow, there were criminals among the Pilgrims? Now that is something we do not talk about at Thanksgiving!
Nash writes in his foreword, "As my studies and search for facts intensified I began to view the American criminal as a breed apart from the criminals of other countries. The American genus began to emerge as one striving for his own criminal identity in a society that considered him integral with something called the Frontier Spirit; a society that knew the criminal outwardly, condemned him as being against the common good, yet marked him for special recognition in a pioneer category aligned with obsessive types such as carnival freaks, daredevils, and wilderness adventurers who came with the bark on. The criminal became, in many respects, an extension of all of these- the loudest, the gaudiest. He was noise! He was public! And he was ours!"
My only problem with this book is that I will never know which of these bad people was the Puritan. Shame on you, Nash. If you mention something in your title, you should list it in the index! Oh, well...
Look for this book on the new non-fiction table.
