MURDER IN AMERICA: A HISTORY

Homicide has always fascinated us. In an age of terrorism, serial killings and drive-by shootings, the topic of murder frightens Americans, influencing much of our politics, our choices of where to live and work, and the relations among our races and classes. Historically, it is central to the biblical account of human genesis, to the great epics of peoples around the globe, to Oedipus, Hamlet and Macbeth. But historians have only begun to investigate it. This is a study of the history of criminal homicide in America, reaching from precolonial time to the age of O.J. Simpson and TWA Flight 800.