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Reviews By DeSpair Recommendations



Bloody Business: An Anecdotal History of Scotland Yard By H. Paul Jeffers (Berkley) Although the fact above is a rollicking story, I just finished reading the book it was culled from - Bloody Business by H. Paul Jeffers - and I must say I was not terribly impressed. The Edward Gorey cover is fantastic and there are a few interesting stories, but not nearly enough to hold my interest. If you are interested in learning about the history of Scotland Yard - such as how the police department was originally set-up and who led it over the years, then you might find it very satisfying, but I was hoping for a bit more blood and guts. NN - Too Much Business, Not Enough Blood
The Devil In The White City By Erik Larson Vintage This book is about the World's Columbian Exhibition of 1893 which was held in Chicago, and was one of the greatest artistic, engineering, and architectural achievements in American history. And it's about our old friend H. H. Holmes, widely-regarded as America's first serial killer, who built a hotel to lure young fair-goers, of the female variety, to a most grim fate. Strangely enough, it wasn't the chapters of the book that discuss Holmes that I found most interesting. Rather, it was the work of Daniel Burnham and Frederick Olmsted, as the construction supervisor and landscape architect of the fair, that I found fascinating. The fact that they were able to pull off the fair and turn the desolate, muddy wild that was Jackson Park into the glorious, sparkling White City in such a short period of time is truly amazing. Especially when you learn of all the things that went wrong during the construction! And the World's Columbian Exposition itself is such a subject of fascination for a nostalgic soul like myself. So many things that we take for granted today originated or were popularized during this fair: Cracker Jacks, the Ferris Wheel, the carnival midway, shredded wheat, AC electricity, even that exotic little snake-charmer melody that goes, "There's a place in France where the naked ladies dance..." It's a fascinating chronicle and I highly recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in history! NNNNN - An Affair To Remember!
The Good Old Days — They Were Terrible! By Dr. Otto L. Bettmann Random House A chronicle of the horrors of the 19th century, a time when filth, disease, crime, and overcrowding was rampant in American urban areas. Thought provoking and filled with many lovely morbid illustrations. If you need to be reassured that things really weren't better "before," look no further! Lizz adores this book as well! "I just got a book that screams Asylum Eclectica. I'm pretty sure it's not already on your site [alas, it is], but I've been known for my oversights. Anyway, the book is called 'The Good Old Days - They Were Terrible!' by Otto L. Bettmann. Not only is it brimming with wonderful drawings and photos from the 19th century but the oh so morbid narrative of daily life in that era is enough to make you get on your knees and thank Buddha we didn't live back then. Here is a snippet: "'Children's Food: Beer and sardines for the babies - Pickles for the boys! Many children developed a strange hunger for pickles, generated, Robert Spargo (who the F is that?) believed, by chronic underfeeding that caused a nervous craving for some stimulant - much like the craving of an alcoholic for liquor. But the deterioration went further. "It is a horrible fact that many children whose diet is so unwholesome cannot eat decent food even when they are hungry." Slum children at times refused to touch passable food offered them during outings arranged by charitable groups. Some of them had to be taught to eat: it took days before they could be induced to touch eggs and drink milk and give up their pickles.' "'Milk: A water shortage would put the milkman out of business! - It was common knowledge to New Yorkers that their milk was diluted. And the dealers were neither subtle nor timid about it; all they required was a water pump to boost two quarts of milk to a gallon. Nor was that the end of the mischief: to improve the color of milk from diseased cattle they frequently added molasses, chalk or plaster of Paris.' "This book is great! It talks about every aspect of life in the 19th century. A must have for lovers of Victorian angst! It's available on Amazon.com." Russ is also quite enamored: "I suppose I am like most other folks in that, from time to time, find myself thinking how great it would be to live around the turn of the last century. Not anymore! No matter what troubles we have in the present era, they are eclipsed by the problems of the past. Thankfully, we have come a long way. This book is an easy read with lots of super illustrations and I found it on Ebay for under $5!" NNNN - Terribly Interesting!
The History Of Torture By Brian Innes St. Martin's Press An exhaustive look at torture throughout the ages, packed with lots of wince-inducing illustrations. Often-gruesome, but never less than compelling. (Not Yet Reviewed)
Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York (Vintage Departures) By Luc Sante Vintage Books Recommended by Sue Prendergast: "Here's part of the blurb: 'Opium dens and old-law tenements, brothels, dives, and suicide saloons --these are some of the ports of call in Luc Sante's exuberant and formidably learned journey through the underbelly of old New York. Pimps, madams, rat-killing dogs, ear-chewing thugs, con men, and extravagantly crooked cops are among the natives. Low Life is a masterpiece of outlaw urban history--pungently written, voluminously researched, and illustrated with a wealth of archival photographs.' Rest assured, the book is divinely written, unlike the hackneyed blurb (where do they get the people who write these things...in praise, sometimes, as now, of marvelously written works of art?). The "Philadelphia Inquirer" puts its lauds in a more meaningful way: "Fascinating...we should all be grateful to Sante for produc[ing] this entertaining and sobering history of New York's 'dark side'....[It] delights the reader with constant felicities...replete not only with wit, but with feeling." I couldn't have put it better myself (well, yes, I could, but it would take me too long to key in). This book was profoundly moving to me, as evidenced by my going out and actually ordering it to buy...from my friend at the second hand bookstore 'round the corner, of course. However, it was well worth the money--she wasn't able to find it used for me, but ordered a new, trade paper back copy for me. I'd say you'd find it in the HISTORY/ SOCIOLOGY section of the bookstore." (Not Yet Reviewed)
The Mammoth Book Of The History Of Murder By Colin Wilson Carroll & Graf A great look at murder from the ancients to the present. My favorite parts are the extensive discussion of all manner of blood-thirsty and diabolically imaginative tyrants. (Not Yet Reviewed)
The Pessimist's Guide To History By Stuart and Doris Flexner Quill Now, this is my kind of history book - it leaves out all the boring crap and gets straight to the stuff we really want to know about - disasters, tyrants, accidents, wars, assassinations, etc. And it's all done with an irreverent, playful sense of humor that some find delightful and some find offensive. Bet you can't guess which kind I am, huh? Maura likes it: "I can't put it down. It's quite an amazing read..." (Not Yet Reviewed)
Royal Babylon: The Alarming History of European Royalty By Karl Shaw Broadway Books Recommended by Aliza Mansolino: "A delightful little compendium... chock full of fascinating facts about the royal houses of Europe and their various pecadillos, such as their penchant for incest, inbreeding, torture and plain old freaky weirdness. It's written in an entertaining, gossipy E!Online style, too. Definitely fun reading, and very informative - I mean, I had no idea that Peter the Great had a penchant for preserving the penises of his wife's lovers in formaldehyde and leaving them on her nightstand. Who knew?"g! (Not Yet Reviewed)
An Underground Education By Richard Zacks Anchor Books An absolutely marvelous examination of those historical tid-bits that they never teach you in school, like the indecent forgotten parts of the Bible, the sexual side of slavery, and the evolution of underwear. Ah, but we're here to discuss the morbid side of life, and there's a lot of disturbing darkness scattered throughout the book, especially in the "Crime & Punishment" and "Medicine" chapters. An immensely fascinating and enlightening book - highly, highly recommended! NNNNN - Enthralling Arcana!
Wisconsin Death Trip By Michael Lesy 2000, University of New Mexico Press "The pictures you're about to see are of people who were once actually alive." So begins historian Michael Lesy's masterpiece - a by turns touching and disturbing examination of life and death in a small Wisconsin town during the final 15 years of the nineteenth century. Lesy stumbled across a cache of 30,000 glass plate images made by a local town photographer named Charley Van Schaick and spools of microfilm from the local newspaper - and combined the most compelling of these images and newspaper excerpts to create a vivid examination of Victorian prairie life. Although there are numerous post-mortem memorial photographs to add morbid appeal to the book, the newspaper and insane asylum excerpts are what I find absolutely enthralling. If ever anyone tries to suggest to you that times were better "before", you might want to refer them to these matter-of-fact tales of murder, suicide, insanity, and lethal pestilence. Death was a constant threat and entire families of 6 children could be wiped out by diptheria in a matter of days. It's no wonder that so many were driven to suicide: the depth of despair that these people must have gone through is at times palpable. To give you an idea of the sort of macabre fascinations you can find in these olde newspapers, here are some excerpts: "The 60 year old wife of a farmer in Jackson, Washington County, killed herself by cutting her throat with a sheep shears" "Mrs. James Baty... died suddenly of a hemorrhage of the lungs. She leaves a husband, her family of 6 children having died of diptheria last summer" "Mrs. John Larson... drowned her 3 children in Lake St. Croix during a fit of insanity... Mrs. Larson imagines that devils pursue her" And my personal favorite: "Mrs. Carter... was taken sick at the marsh last week and fell down, sustaining internal injuries which have dethroned her reason. She has been removed to her home here and a few nights since arose from her bed and ran through the woods... A night or two after she was found trying to strangle herself with a towel... It is hoped the trouble is only temporary and that she may soon recover her mind" You don't see entries like that in newspapers anymore! NNNNN - The Comtesse's Favorite Book
Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography In America By Geoffrey Abbott Headline Book Pub Ltd "Without Sanctuary" is an amazing, but very upsetting, collection of lynching photographs and some of the stories that go with them. Although the images of the beaten, burned, mutilated, and hung victims are horrible enough on their own, the thing that truly disturbs me about these photographs are the spectators - men, women, and children - smiling, goofing off, and proudly posing in front of the corpses, just as if they were at a Fourth of July picnic or something. It's really frightening to think how cruel and vicious "good god-fearing citizens" behaved not so very long ago (the majority of the pictures date from the 1890's-1930's, though the most recent comes from 1960). I think this book is performing a great service by refusing to allow this country to forget its own barbarities of the not-so-distant past. Also recommended by Einstein Shrugged: "I picked up a copy of this one night in a fit of drunken Amazon shopping so when it turned up it was a bit of a surprise but morbid surprises are always the best kind. There's not much in the way of text (though what they have is pretty intense) and it mostly lets the photography speak for itself. I've had it for a little over a week and have already read and looked through it twice. The lynchings are bad enough, but the crowd shots of happy, smiling people make it one of the most disturbing books I've read in a long time." NNNNN - Upsetting But Essential!
The Big Book Series The Big Book Series from Factoid Press is a collection of factual anthologies on a variety of fascinating subjects, all done in comic book art. Each story within the anthology is illustrated by a different comic book illustrator. Some of the books are less morbid than others, but they are all fascinating. The Big Book Of Bad The Big Book Of Death The Big Book Of Grimm The Big Book Of Hoaxes The Big Book Of Little Criminals The Big Book Of Martyrs The Big Book Of Scandal The Big Book Of The Unexplained The Big Book Of Urban Legends NNNNN - Gruesome Good Reads!

The Art Of Suicide by Ron Brown (Reaktion Books) Recommended by Sunflower: "In all honesty, I haven't read it entirely yet, but it has some of the most incredible paintings and drawings... everything from ancient Greece to the early 20th century, even an odd photo of the Heaven's Gate thing."
Countess Dracula by Tony Thorne (Bloomsbury) Recommended by Scott: "This book is fantastic. It explains that [Elizabeth] was no worse at mistreating her employees than any other noble person in those turbulent times in Central Europe. It explains that she was, in fact, persecuted for being a woman - her male rivals engineered trumped up charges to enrich themselves with her property. The book is quite fascinating and contains information on how brutal times were then... which would no doubt interest you! But, unfortunately for lovers of gore, Elizabeth Bathory was not a monster."
The History of Torture by Daniel P. Mannix (Sutton Publishing) Recommended by Alavahr: "I've heard of a book called 'The History Of Torture,' which was written by Daniel P. Mannix, who also wrote 'Freaks: We Who Are Not As Others,' 'Memoirs of A Sword Swallower,' 'Those About To Die' and 'The Wolves of Paris.' Though I haven't read 'History,' if it's anything like the others, it's well worth picking up."
In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer by Irene Gut Opdyke and Jennifer Armstrong (Anchor) Recommended by Cassandra: "I recently had to a read a book for school called 'In My Hands' by Irene Gut Opdyke. [What a great name - Comtesse] It's the story of a Polish girl living through WW II and it details what she sees and her actions due to it. At first I dreaded having to read another Holocaust book but this one really kept me interested. It detailed soldiers throwing a baby into the air like a flying bird and having it shot down dead to the ground. It's very interesting and since it's a true story, it makes it all that much better! Enjoy :)"
King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild (Mariner Books) Recommended by Dov: " For a treat, read 'King Leopold's Ghost'. It reeks of despair and murder and slavery and hypocrisy. It's a nice Christmas coffee table book. "
The Little Book Of Bad Taste Parragon Publishing Recommended by Burleyque: "... full of great morbid gems - it opens with a list of 'surprise fillings' including an Italian stripper who suffocated in a birthday cake and various appendages showing up in various food products."
The Mammoth Book Of Illustrated Crime: A Photographic History by Colin and Damon Wilson (Carroll & Graf Publishers) Recommended by Denese: "It's a photographic history of crime, just like the title says. The authors are British, so the viewpoint on some of the crimes is a bit askew. The book starts in 1864 and ends with 9/11/01. In between are some gruesome pictures, some boring pictures, and some very interesting tidbits. Have you ever heard of Marie Tarnovska? Because this woman is my new hero. Some of the pictures are just boring headshots of famous criminals, but then you pictures of things you never wanted to see, such as John Wayne Bobbit's severed bobbit. Boy, you turn the page to that and it just leaps right off the page at you. :) There are also a lot of interesting European serial killers and heinous murders that I'd never heard of. All in all, I think you'd like this book."
The Most Evil Men and Women In History by Miranda Twiss (Michael O'Mara Books) Recommended by Ladyfreud: I have come upon a great read (so far). A very interesting little book titled 'The Most Evil Men and Women in History' by Miranda Twiss. It's spanned out over the last 2000 years. Not enough pictures :( But still interesting. It includes: Caligula Nero Attila the Hun King John Torquemada Prince Vlad Dracula Francisco Pizarro "Bloody" Mary I Ivan IV "the Terrible" Elizabeth, Countess of Bathroy Rasputin Joseph Stalin Adolf Hitler Ilse Koch Pol Pot Idi Amin."
Mutiny on the Globe by Thomas Farel Heffernan Recommended by Jen: "... this is a really great new book- lots of mutiny and long bloody knives"
Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34 by Bryan Burrough (Penguin) Recommended by Katchaya: "This looks like a great book I'll have to get!"
They Died Crawling & Other Tales of Cleveland Woe by John S. Bellamy (Gray & Co.) Recommended by Carrie Proeschel: "Horror and Tragedy in Cleveland! What could be better! The book examines several cases of death and trauma with a witty storytelling style. It features photos and old excerpts from the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The author also wrote The Maniac in the Bushes and The Corpse in the Cellar. Both are further studies of tragedy in Cleveland but I have yet to read these! Enjoy!"
Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition by Rafael Sabatini (Kessinger Publishing) Recommended by Vern on the lovely Gold Coast of Queensland: "I have a book, 'Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition' by the apologist catholic Rafael Sabatini first published in 1913 by Stanley Paul & Co. Ltd. If you can find a copy it's a very interesting read."
A Treasury Of Victorian Murder by Rick Geary (Nantier Beall Minoustchine Publishing ) Recommended by Bruce. For several years, Rick Geary has been creating graphic novels based on Victorian-era crime stories, entitled "A Treasury of Victorian Murder". Bruce specifically recommends one of his more recent episodes, "dealing with the so-called 'H. H. Holmes', aka The Beast of Chicago. Geary's an excellent illustrator and has done a fine job on the earlier titles (I most enjoyed the Lizzie Borden and Jack the Ripper ones)." They all sound quite fascinating! The Beast of Chicago: An Account of the Life and Crimes of Herman W. Mudgett, Known to the World As H.H. Holmes, also know as : H. M. Howard, D. T. Pratt,... A Treasury of Victorian Murder The Case of Madeleine Smith The Mystery of Mary Rogers The Murder of Abraham Lincoln Jack the Ripper: A Journal of the Whitechapel Murders 1888-1889 The Fatal Bullet: The True Account of the Assassination, Lingering Pain, Death, and Burial of James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States The Borden Tragedy: A Memoir of the Infamous Double Murder at Fall River, Mass., 1892

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