True Crime Books

This book provides a background and context for the murder-suicide of Ricky Rodriguez, the involuntary prophet-apparent of The Family, an international religious cult. Also known as The Children of God, the group began in the late sixties under direction of David Berg, a self-appointed prophet, polygamist, pedophile, and narcissist. It continues today, led by Karen (sp?) Zerby, Ricky Rodriguez's mother. The book is a very well-rounded account of the cult's beginnings, compared with other so-called new religions, written by a journalist who covered religion for major newspapers for many years. It's a quick, informative read. I also recommend Not Without My Sisters, a memoir by three girls who grew up moving in the cult around the world.

Very well written, although disturbing book: I didn't know much about the Children of God/The Family except for a short segment on 60 Minutes several years ago about Ricky Rodriguez and the murder-suicide. I read this book a few months ago, and it's still in my head. Definitely worth reading but the level of abuse described is horrific.

Well-written tale of neo-religious cult spinoffs that head down a dark and desolate path. Expertly told story should please students of religious history as well as true crime readers.

This book was not titled or described as it should have been. This book was so far off base from the description on the front of the cover " A True Story of Murder and Madness on the Evangelical Edge." No the book should have been titled " Boring account of religious cults." The author never focused on the story surrounding the pretence of this book. It was to be about a MURDER not religious history of the 60.s 70's ect. Did not even finish this book.

My name is Josh Bruni and while I haven't yet read the book, I have heard about it and would like to make a few comments about COG/the family.
I was born and raised in "the family". I left when I was 20 in the year 2000. My mother and 6 brothers and sisters still live in "the family" in various parts of the world. I'll never rejoin and I don't recomend anyone else join. What a lot of people who've never been a member don't realize is, when you have been born into "the family" you don't know what "normal" is. When you leave, it takes a while, several years in my case, to realize how weird and twisted some of the things you've been taught actually are. Any book that exposes the inner goings on of that group, I strongly recomend. See also the book "Not without my sister" by ex-members of the same group.

Josh Bruni
[...]

As a practicing forensic pathologist, I will recomend this book to anybody interested in the topic, specially my colleagues in this line of work. THe questions and arguments expressed in it are worth considering everytime we make a decision as to cause of death and specially on something so subjective as manner of death. This book is an open invitation to reflect on topics that we take for granted.
Pedro M. Ortiz Colom MD

Not a fun read...qusi scientific with enough detail to satisfy anybody shor of a fourth year med student...lots of details such as what is the difference between a medical Examiner and a Coroner...a walk through of a autopsy of an unkown death and how the ME made critical decision as to how the person died.

The author then goes into spacific areas of interest such as suicide...infant deaths...murder and the organ tissue trade.

A criticism of this book to some might be that the author uses fictious names, places and ME's in telling his stories. Although he explain this in the preface and provides extensive notes and source material this may bother the purists among us, I didn't find it to be a problem.

Postmortem: How Medical Examiners Explain Suspicious Deaths offers what few competitors can: a close-up look into just how medical examiners work. The author spent three years shadowing examiners to understand how they probe questionable deaths, and Postmortem covers not just the physical but the legal, social and moral issues faced by the industry. From issues of objectivity in the face of subjective evidence to influences in headline cases, Postmortem is a title not just for the general public, but especially for the college- level medical collection.

This is a superb book that examines the profession of medical examiners from a sociological perspective. The author spent several years observing the practices and methods of one (anonymous) urban medical examiner's office close-up, standing in at autopsies and conducting many interviews with all levels of staff.

The book looks at several topics in detail: coronary artery disease; shaken baby syndrome in the "Nanny Trial"; suicide; and organ and tissue donation. (I'm probably leaving something out here.)

The introduction is a tad jargony if you are not a sociologist or academic, but very interesting nonetheless. The author explains the difference between medical examiners (physicians) and coroners, who do not need any medical experience, are usually elected, and conduct public inquests. Much of the book looks at differences between various professions and explains why they may be competing with each other for authority and professional recognition. For example, forensic pathologists do not have the same goals as public health officials, as seen in the cases of coronary artery disease and suicide. Pathologists (looking at dead bodies) may come in conflict with clinicians (looking at the live patient), as seen in the case of shaken baby syndrome at criminal trials. The goals of pathologists are often at odds with those of organ and tissue donation advocates; the pathologist may need to do an exceptionally thorough autopsy in the case of a suspicious death or a homicide, while the organ donor advocate may insist that a patient in need of a liver should ethically take priority over the non-existent needs of a dead body.

The endnotes and bibliography are extensive and well worth reading.

This is a thoroughly interesting and entertaining book about Rhine's experiences as a forensic anthropologist in the state of New Mexico. Anyone interested in forensic anthropology forensics in general should give this book a try...I may be biased because Stan Rhine is a professor emeritus of the University of New Mexico, where I am a student, but this book is absolutely wonderful!

I am biased--Stan Rhine was a professor of mine at UNM. His book reads much like his delivery in class. Stan is an excellent storyteller and a solid forensic anthropologist. His 30+ years as a forensic investiagtor have led him into many adventures. The best of these he relates in this book. I myself have handled the skeletal evidence from some of these cases. While his investigations lack the notariety of say, Clyde Snow's or Bill Maples', the experiences are no less entertaining. I heartily recommend this book for its subtle humor and educational value.

Well, if you are a member of the "Good-Old-Boys" club in New Mexico, this is the exact book for you!! Other than that, this book only flashes occassionally with interesting notions and bright ideas. Though I really wanted to enjoy this book [and tried to do so regardless of the Self-Absorbed blather] it was somewhat of a struggle. Perhaps if the author had left out all the back-slapping self congratulatory drivel, this would have been a top-quality presentation. SIGH, you must read between the drivel to get to the content. The content is nice but too cluttered for my taste.

"Bone Voyage" is absolutely one of the best books on Forensic Anthropology that I've ever read! I was very impressed with the detail, and every base was covered, from balistics to the examination of the criminal mind. This book had some pictures, I would have liked more, but with the descriptions given by the author, I guess more pictures would not have been necessary. The book was broken down in to a lot of short chapters dealing with one case per chapter, unlike several books I've read where it's just one long run on of several different cases. This book was very organized in its writing and its reading. I've read a lot of books on the subject of Forensic Anthropology, and this book is definitely worth another reading. DEFINITELY RECOMMENDED.

For those of you interested in working in the field of forensics (a seemingly popular job choice in recent times), this book is a must read. Rhine engages the reader by telling a number of tales; for example, the puzzling discovery of a body that looked female, but wearing male clothes, and how he determined the sex of the individual. He even tells us in a quite funny essay how he made enemies of the museum staff by boiling off the soft tissue of a body and causing people to vomit on the museum floor.

All in all, a very practical view into the field. Rhine does not attempt to romanticize the profession; he merely tells his stories the way they should be told- very matter of factly. The book is funny at times, but his humor does not overshadow the information conveyed here.

The crimes he selected for this work were reasonably well researched and his choices were interesting. (Although there are notes in the new edition that some of the stories he reported are myths) As far as finding out about different interesting crimes, this book is tops.
However, his analysis of the crimes is lacking. He provides no basis for many of his ideas and shows tremendous conservative bias.
He states that a woman's natural instinct is to take care of a house while men are naturally more aggressive and take more risks.
He blames the sexual revolution (instead of the alienation caused by a large society) for the outbreak of serial murderers.

His analysis of the motivations behind the crimes seems to be seldom accurate and often biased, but the crimes he chooses vary widely and are generally interesting.

Colin Wilson is is a prolific author, he has written over 90 books, since the publication of his "The Outsider" decades ago. There are certain themes that Mr. Wilson deals with in his writings, and it is also exhibited here. In his writings, he has attempted to understand man, and there is no law fortuantely saying that you must be a Phd in order to do so, and it is a presumptous fallacy to say that non Phd's cannot make a contribution to the subject. What can be even more infuriating for some is a non Phd rejecting academic opinion--and being right. A reviewer here criticized Wilson for "psychologizing" and for using older sources. These are erroneous criticisms. Wilson in this book attempts more than a mere compilation of crimes, but tries to understand them. And the fact that someone
he cites in helping him understand crimes wrote earlier in the 20th Century is irrelevant. Just because someone wrote something long ago does not mean that it is erroneous.
Wilson does not engage in Freudian psycho-analysis--in fact, he reject it, correctly. While the desire for sex is a factor in human psychology, it is not the only thing. Wilson follows the psychologist Abraham Maslow. Maslow argued that man has a hierarchy of needs, and the highest is the creative urge. And, as Wilson says "Anybody who wants to do a job well, just for the sheer pleasure of it, is expressing the creative urge." (page 342). This psychological theory is supported by the history of crime. When society is at a subsistence level, it is for the needs for food and territory that most crimes are committed. Then by the 1940s, when society had advanced by then from the subsistence level, the sex crime, once the rarest of all reasons for murder, had become commonplace. Now, Wilson says we are in the age of the "self-esteem murder." WIlson then gives an interesting reason why the murder rate may drop in the future. The highest need is the creative urge, and creativity and murder are usually incompatible. Thus "if society can get past the stage of the self-esteem killer, the murder rate should drop steeply."
As to the theory that creativity and murder are incompatable, Wilson offers as support that he can only find one writer who has committed murder. Writers, like others, have committed crimes, but murder by a writer is almost non-existent.
If there is a possible weakness to this book, it is that a certain type of criminal type was not dealt with, and that is because it occurred on the world stage after Wilson wrote this book. It may be called the "Super Villian." To quote Jonah Goldberg's article at nationalreview.com, "James Bond Was Right."
The villians of James Bond movies, like Blofeld--unfortuanelty may become a greater reality. In the past, the state, through the power to tax, was the only organization that had the reasources to inflict massive damage. With the general development of the economy and technology, individuals or an organization can attain great wealth, and then use their wealth for nefarous purposes, such as Bin Laden and his al-quida organization, or narco-organizations in South America.

did anyone who complained about this book, and felt that it was lacking more recent crimes, turn to the copywrite page in the beginning?
"Originally Published in Crime and Society 1973/4/5/6"
the parts written in 1998 are the introduction and pages 95-104 and 506-22. Meaning the chapters on Computer Crime and Servants Who Kill are the only chapters written in 1998.
I felt this book was a good collection of crimes. Sometimes the more recent crimes shown on tv and in newer books can be a bit redundent, it was nice to read about crimes that took place before DNA could solve everything.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys the true crime genre. There's loads of material in this lengthy book, and the best part is that the author avoids the well-trodden paths of the more famous crimes. I read a lot of true crime, and most of the cases in the book were new to me. It's very readable and engrossing.

Now my complaints: first, the author sometimes over-reaches his own abilities on psychological analysis of criminals and their crimes. He should leave the psychoanalysis to the professionals.

Second, when he does introduce the work of legitimate psychiatrists, he goes back to work done in the first half of the twentieth century and doesn't use anything more recent. Several times I checked the publication date to be sure I read 1998 and not 1968--If this book is so recent, why would he look to Freud to explain the psychology of crime instead of the more recent (and probably the more accurate work) of Robert Ressler, et al?

On a related note is the terminology he uses, which also makes the book seem dated. On the chapter headed "Mass Murders", not one of the accounts is about a criminal who kills multiple people at one time. It seems pretty basic that anyone writing true crime should know the distinction between mass murder and serial murder. He also sometimes describes the perpetrators/victims with a somewhat Victorian sensationalism, referring to them as "sex maniacs" or a 15-year old girl in the 1950's as the "mistress" of a boy her own age (who says "mistress" when referring to an adolescent boyfriend-girlfriend relationship in the 20th century???)

But the author's sometime Victorian mentality (and word choice) is only slightly annoying, and the plethora of true crime tales more than makes up for it.

Fascinating read, especially for detailing some of the European crimes that are largely unknown on the U.S. side of the pond. In fact, roughly 2/3 of the book is dedicated to these crimes, the remaining being devoted to the dreaded American criminal. The inherent irony in his writing style is that although most of the book details eurocrimes, when the Americans are referenced there is usually commentary regarding the prospective socio-psychological "problems" in American society which result in these crimes although nary a mention is made to the potential causes of the crimes which occur in Euro society. The socialist slant placed on his deductions of motive and cause along with some dreadful editing chop two whole stars off this 600+ page monstrosity. Because it dealt with some crimes hitherto unknown to me (of course, along with some world-famous ones as well), this was a fascinating read. But I'm telling you once you get to those areas of atrocious editing, psychological profiling with the blinders on and hardcore leftist slant you may be left wincing (unless you're a bad psychologist hardcore leftist who enjoys poor editing).

I find many of the reviews "right on".

However, many comments are off-base, and as His Cousin, I find inappropriate. Ask, and you may find Truth!

"No disrespect..." ..."but"... there is that word again... don't listen to what I just said, just what I am about to say...

Amazing how the critics, nearly a Century later, have criticisms that sting, but couldn't find the gumption to face Him... or me!

Let's get it on!

Simply put, William Roughead was and is the greatest true crime writer of them all. Combining unusually supple storytelling talents with an inimitable, pawky sense of humor, he remains the best prose stylist chronicling human depravity since, well, the compilers of the King James Bible. A Scot by birth, Roughead became a Writer to the Signet at the turn of the last century, a privileged position which allowed him to attend and write up the great murder trials of his day and his favorites from Great Britain's colorfully criminous past. Almost all of his works are shamefully out of print but are well worth searching out in used book stores: both his own popular accounts and his contributions to the more formally edited "Notable British Trials" series. Henry James was one of his many besotted fans, and even the briefest sample of his work makes it obvious why true crime buffs consider him the Master. "Classic Crimes" (which includes chapters on Deacon Brodie, Burke and Hare, Madeleine Smith, Dr. Pritchard and other irresistible villains) is the best collection of his work, and I would be remiss if I did not own that my introduction to his peerless work came via Toni Morrison, who confessed her own idolatrous admiration in the New York Times Book Review some two decades ago. If you like Roughead, you'll never be able to get enough. As Luc Sante writers in his perceptive introduction to this latest reprint, Roughead repeatedly creates narratives which contain "in full that collision of placid, well-furnished pedantry with savage howling atavism" that was the keynote of his fascination with evil--and Roughead did believe in evil--people. More of his genius is avalable on display in "Twelve Scots Trials," available from Amazon. co.uk. As Roughead so eloquently put it: "Murder has a magic of its own, its peculair alchemy. Touched by that crimson wand, things base and sordid, things ugly and of ill report, are transformed into matters wondrous, weird and tragical. Dull streets become fraught with mystery, commonplace dwellings assume sinister aspects, everyone concerned, howsoever plain and ordinary, is invested with a new value and importance as the red light fall upon each."

William Roughead's accounts of great crimes from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Scotland and England are about the most delicious mind candy I can think of; I opened this new edition from NYRB and almost couldn't put it down. While his vocabulary and style at times go a bit overboard in terms of their purpleness, he still presents very readable and exciting accounts of some incredible crimes which still haunt the popular imagination today (such as his account of the West Port murders of Burke and Hare, the body snatchers).

Re-issuing Roughead's work is really a feather in NYRB's cap, and yet I can't help wishing they had taken more pains with this edition. (Because of this, I felt I could not really offer it the five stars it otherwise would've deserved.) The introduction by Luc Sante is interesting, but not without errors: he notes that all of the crimes excepting those of Burke and Hare "are discoveries [on the part of Roughead]"; yet Roughead himself admits that Deacon Brodie's case has been dramatized many times, and inspired Stevenson's "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Madeleine Smith's trial inspired a film, "Madeleine," directed by David Lean in the 1950s. Similarly, no editor seems to have taken the time to annotate some of Roughead's more bizarre (or anachronistic, or peculiarly Scottish) terms: "douce" is used repeatedly for "sweet", and "lands" (apparently a term for the highrise towers in Edinburgh) recurs often too, yet there's nary a word of explanation. This lack of editorial interference is not welcome, especially since Roughead often refers repeatedly to other writings of his which his original audience would have recognized but which remain obscure to a contemporary reader.

Still, this book is a real treasure--and, as with all NYRB books, it comes on beautiful paper and with a gorgeous cover.

Simply put, William Roughead was and is the greatest true crime writer of them all. Combining a supple prose style with an inimitable, pawky sense of humor, he remains the best prose stylist chronicling human depravity since, well, the authors of the King James Bible. A Scot by birth, Roughead became a Writer to the Signet, a privileged position which allowed him to attend and write up the great murder trials of his era (1870-1952). His works are shamefully out of print and are well worth searching out in used book stores: both his commercial collections and his contributions to the "Notable British Trials" series. Henry James was one of his many devoted fans and even the briefest sample of his prose makes it obvious why true-crime buffs consider him the master. "Classic Crimes"(which includes chapters on Deacon Brodie, Burke and Hare, Madeleine Smith, Dr. Pritchard, William Palmer, etc.) is the best collection of his work in print and I would be remiss if I did not mention that I owe my introduction to this peerless writer to Toni Morrison, who confessed her own idolatrous admiration in a New York Times Book Review piece more than 20 years ago. If you like his stuff you'll never be able to get enough of it. (Also worth securing are the works of Roughead's friend, the American Edmund Pearson, whose "Studies in Murder" was reprinted last last by the Ohio State University Press.) As Roughead so eloquently put it: "Murder has a magic of its own, its peculiar alchemy. Touched by that crimson wand, things base and sordid, things ugly and of ill report, are transformed into matters wondrous, weird and tragical. Dull streets become fraught with mystery, commonplace dwellings assume sinister aspects, everyone concerned, howsoever plain and ordinary, is invested with a new value and importance as the red light falls upon each."

This is a truly enjoyable read of murders and a recounting of the trials associated with them.-Roughead is an inimitable Scottish stylist and, as Luc Sante points out in the introduction, his "musical" use of abstruse Scottishisms is a joy in and of itself to read.

The only thing in literature to which one can really compare it is Sherlock Holmes-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle makes an appearance in one of these cases, btw.-I don't mean to do Roughead a disservice in this comparison-Certainly, these are as true to the actual facts as Roughead could make them (and he goes to great lengths to do so), and several of the cases remain unsolved or "Not Proven"-a verdict in Scots law with which you shall become all too familiar if you read this book. - But, the same Victorian atmospherics are present as in Doyle, the Victorian moralisms, the eerie descriptions, the bumbling Dogberries of police constables. It's actually refreshing to know that these things existed just as Doyle wrote of them....except these cases are REAL!

Of course, there's the question the contemplative reader asks himself from time to time as to why he is interested in the macabre and the details thereof.-An interesting question.-I know not the answer.-But we all are, it would seem, to one ghoulish extent or the other.

5 Macabre, Scottish Stars!

I vaguely remember this book with lists of name, some familiar and some not, about female serial killers. I don't believe Aileen Wuornos killed for pleasure as a reaction to trauma in her life. The main difference between males and females is the kind of killing. Women like Belle Gunness, the Black Widows, and others killed for profit more than pleasure. Their killings went unnoticed because women were not expected to be like their male counterparts. Unlike the men, women are far more or less likely to be cannibals like Dahmer and Chikatilo or necrophiliacs like Bundy and Ridgway. The difference between the women and men was that they can be divided into two groups. Women who killed for profit were less likely to use guns and more poison such as arsenic. Of course, there were men who killed for profit like Petiot in France during World War II but women who had less opportunities to gain a substantial income so quickly would rather kill their spouses, siblings, children, and others in order to inherit insurance or wealth mostly through poisoning them. Regardless, this book is simply a collection of briefly mentioned serial killers like Wuornos, Myra Hindley of the famous Moors Killing, Karla Homolka-Bernard, Belle Gunness, and other women who turned to murder in order to satisfy their killing needs. Some female serial killers like Hindley and Homolka (Karla was released in prison after only serving 12 years) enjoyed the crimes with an equally sadistic partner. Sadly, Karla is free and Myra died in prison.

I'm disappointed to find these reviews only AFTER buying this book. I only bought the book because I was interested to read about one particular case - that of Vera Renczi (pp. 67-70), about which I had heard on a TV documentary that referenced 'Murder Most Rare' as source. I was confused on hearing in the TV documentary that Vera Renczi was born in Bucharest, Hungary, so I wanted to buy this book to see what it said about her actual origin. Her name sounds completely Hungarian, so I would have been persuaded that she was of Hungarian origin - however, the book (like the TV documentary citing it, and on which Michael Kelleher actually appeared) also says that Vera Renczi was born in Bucharest, but that she is Hungarian. The fact that this detail is not explained (I feel I don't really NEED to say that Bucharest is actually the capital of ROMANIA, while BUDAPEST is the capital of Hungary..... and even in 1903, when Vera Renczi was supposedly born, Bucharest was the capital of Romania, and only Transylvania was still a part of Hungary...) makes me think that the authors of 'Murder Most Rare' have no knowledge of European geography whatsoever. Very sad that they further the horrible stereotypes about Americans who haven't got the least interest in anything that lies beyond their own borders....
Very disappointed with the quality of research of a book that claims to be 'ground-breaking'!!!
:((((

I completely agree that this book reads like a badly written term-paper AND that the authors are horribly erroneous (and actually contradict themselves) on more than one occasion in the book.

Just in the introduction and first chapter, we find this:
Introduction, xi: "Rather, the crime of serial murder encompasses a broad range of violent activities, from the infamous exploits of the gunslinger of the old West to the unspeakable crimes of Nazi leadership, who perpetrated the Holocaust earlier this century,"

And yet, in another attempt to define serial murder in chapter one, page 5-7, the authors state: "The missing element is the cooling-off period, which always constitutes a recognizable component in a genuine pattern of serial murder."

They have just made the outrageous statement that genocide is, in fact, serial murder, and then in the first chapter, completely changed their own definition of serial murder in such a way that would exclude the Nazi party they so hastily lumped in earlier. They go on to shove their figurative foot farther into their literary mouths by stating, "Whereas the crime of mass murder implies the slaying of a number of victims in a single event," thereby effectively telling us in one breath that the Nazis were all serial murderers (or perhaps only Hitler was? They weren't very clear), and in the next telling us that no, they were not in fact serial murderers, but guilty of mass murder.

On page two, we find this gem: "In the contemporary understanding of the term, serial killing is often considered to be the act of narrowly defined individuals who undertake crimes that are heinous, but also narrowly defined."

The act of narrowly defined individuals? Can we even parse that?

I was tired of reading the word "whereas" by page six.

Complete rubbish, the entire book.

Where was the editor before this book went to print?!

I was also terribly disappointed to learn that notorious serial murderess Patty Cannon is not mentioned anywhere in the book.

Blah.

This book turned out to be a major let down from what you are led to believe you will actually read about. If you're into calculations and ratios between male serial killers and female serial killers, then this book would be it. Not much about the actual women but alot of brief details about them.
Very much a let down, requires you to skim alot just to get a few actual stories.

This book really doesnt go in depth into any of the cases, just gives a brief summation and rating as to the profile of the killers. I want something with more grit and substance. If you are merely into skimming the subject, then this is the book for you.

Pincus weave a fascinating, true tale of what makes killers tick in this 2001 book. Pincus himself interviewed hundreds of killers during his career as a neurologist. He combines his knowledge of the human body and psyche to draw his own conclusion about why people kill. Whether or not you buy into his theory, Pincus offers a solid case in a well-written, slim book that is an excellent, quick reference for fiction crime writers.
Angela Wilson
Author

The point of this fairly slim volume is to convince the reader that many (perhaps the vast majority) of our most dangerous criminals have neurologic impairments, and that brain dysfunction, along with child abuse and paranoid thinking, is at the heart of much violent behavior. This is not an entirely new message, but it is one Pincus approaches with a great deal of authority -- he's a professor of Neurology at Georgetown, was formerly at Yale and has studied dozens of death row prisoners along with his colleague Dorothy Ortnow Lewis.

Dr. Pincus clearly decided not to risk alienating readers with scientific terminology or complex explanations of brain physiology. The book follows the familiar "casebook" true crime format used by various ex-FBI profilers, coroners, and cops. Most chapters focus on a particular criminal Pincus had dealings with (many of them in his role as an expert witness) and what that criminal's life story shows about the origins of homicidal violence.

The coversational writing style (and oddly cheery alliterative chapter titles) stand in contrast to the horrific nature of much of the material. The crime scene details will be familiar to any reasonably hardened reader in the literature. What really stood out for me was the descriptions of childhood abuse endured by many of the perpetrators Pincus has studied. As a former inner-city teacher, I taught kids from pretty screwed up homes, and had some friends from abusive families while growing up. But the stories Pincus recounts (corroborated by siblings and others) remind us that there is almost no downward limit to the depths of human depravity.

What's rather odd about all the better works in the study of violence and homicide is the sense that this field is under-funded, under-appreciated and obscure. Pincus and other pioneers in the field have answered some important questions, but their work raises hundreds more. If, say one percent of the money our government has spent trying to prove that marijuana is dangerous were instead spent on studying the roots of violence, perhaps we'd have more answers.

I just finished "Base Instincts: What Makes Killers Kill" and I am adamant that our society shows so much more monetary respect for crime and punishment than early childhood education. We have had recent headlines about men, here in Austin, spiking babies and toddlers like footballs after a touchdown, in anger, killing or maiming them and ending up in prison for life. While this outrage is profoundly disturbing, professionals dither at whether or not early childcare intervention is ethical, cost effective or necessary in our society. Paying attention to parenting of the young child uplifts not just that family, but our societies future well being. Child abuse is the single most important determinant of future violence, and it is endemic and epidemic in our frontier based national mind set. We need to launch an all out campaign to raise the national consciousness about the importance of the nurturance of women, and the children that they in turn nurture, in the first three years of life, and beyond.

This is a well written, well researched book that should be required reading for all professionals involved with adults and children who exhibit anti-social behaviour. It will be invaluable to educators, psychologists, attorneys, police officers,psychiatrists and more. Why wouldn't anyone who can do so not want to be aware of new findings that could lead to identifying, intercepting and possibly changing the course of a future serial killing or classroom tragedy? Take the time to read the book. It's worth it.

"Base Instincts: What Makes Killers Kill?" by Jonathan H. Pincus, MD, ISBN 0-393-32323-4 pbk, Norton & Co. 2001: a 225 page disquisition plus 13 pages of notes by a NYU Professor of neurology & psychiatry and graduate of Columbina CPS who investigated some 150 murderers over a 25-year period and tenders his unified theory that "killers kill for the same reasons," regardless of their classifications (single, mass, serial, & perhaps genocidal).

Pincus observed that killing arises in the milieu and troika of disturbances which generally discloses (1) childhood abuses (sexual, verbal, physical), (2) frontal lobe damage (birth trauma, chromosomal, genic, infectious, toxic as alcohol & drugs), and (3) a medley of mental (neuro-psychiatric) impairments e.g. bipolar depresssion, paranoia, ADHD, CD, ODD, etc. He hypothesizes that single, mass, and serial killings have similarities with the Nazi/Hitler's paranoid anti-Semitism, Gaza Strip atrocities and various terrorist factions of more recent vintage.

He opines the only feasible remedy would be prevention of child abuse and cites pilot studies underway, and also specifies factors impeding implementation of other remedies including treatment of convicted murderers. He details his basic neurologic testing format including specific tests directed at eliciting impairment of the frontal lobes, the latter being somnething he states most/many neurological examiners fail to do. Dr. Pincus has worked successfully on a number of defense cases aimed at getting death sentences switched to life without parole.

The treatise is not overly technical, the writing style is a bit wordy, and very minor detractions were noted (i.e. XYY in not a chromosomal deficit but a chromosomal excess or defect; Trisomy 21 is no longer referred to as mongolism but Down's syndrome; and this reader is skeptical that someone could & would drink a 12-pack of beer and a pint of whiskey in 45 minutes (one can every 3.75 minutes & not counting the hard liquor).

This study is an important contribution to the study of homicide and it provides engaging thought-provoking commentary on what makes murderers murder and also a workable solution to the problem of homocides. This book gives ample graphic grisly details of physical & sexual abuse, sans pictures, which some readers will find disturbing, but so then is murder. This is a must read.

This is an outstanding book. If you are interested in discovering the source of your inner conflicts and finding a way to navigate through confusion and uncertainty then you must get a copy of this book and READ IT! I've read hundreds of books on eastern philosophy, but this is among the very best and most powerful. Get a copy now!

Let's face it, reading the Gita is rather tedious and boring...similar to reading the Bible. The Gita is rather complex in its psychology and it is very easy to lose focus while reading it. What Osho does is bring relevant questions to life. There is no doubt in my mind that this book is worth it's weight in gold. I would like to buy several copies and give them to friends, but not many people are into Gita.

From back cover...A person who himself is eager for war doesn't care whether the opponnent is eager to fight or not. A person who is eager for war is blind. He never looks at the enemy. He only projects the enemy. He doesn't want to look at the enemy-in fact, whomsoever he meets is an enemy for him. He doesn't need to see the enemy; he creates, he projects the enemy. When a battle is raging within, enemies appear on the outside.

Osho's illuminating commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most famous of Hindu scripture, explains how the patterns and conditionings of our mind create pain and misery, dilemma, conflict and war.

Arjuna, the tortured and reluctant hero, speaks with his enlightened mentor, Krishna, on the eve of the Mahabharata war. Throwing brilliant light on Krishna's responses, Osho exposes the roots of our contemporary personal and global problems and proposes his timeless solution.