True Crime on Google Maps
I’m reading through Nicholas Pileggi's 1986 non-fiction account of Henry Hill’s life Wiseguy, the basis for Martin Scorsese’s 1990 classic Goodfellas. We’ll be talking about Goodfellas in the True...
View ArticleA True Crime Book List
Thanks to this tweet from Mary Kayler, I found this list of the nine most disturbing True Crime books. I was happy to see that three of which are part of the True Crime course syllabus Paul Bond and I...
View ArticleSerial Killers to Spree Killers: a Cultural Shift?
We finished up Ann Rule’s The Stranger Beside Me last week in the True Crime course. And while we read the graphic novel Torso which dealt with a series of related murders in Cleveland during the...
View ArticleLists of Serial Killers on Wikipedia
Image credit: Josh Maynard’s Serial Killers The writing of my last post led me to some pretty crazy lists on Wikipedia that freaked me out a bit. Serial Killer lists! A list of serial killers by number...
View ArticleGoodfellas: I’m Here to Amuse You
Cinephilia and Beyond Tumblr I’ve written before about love of Tumblr before on this blog, and one of the most consistently brilliant Tumblr blogs I follow is the all-things-film tumblr Cinephilia and...
View ArticleWall Street, the Other Mob
I loved the passage in Nicholas Pileggi’s Wiseguy where Henry Hill talks about how the Wall Street bankers took the mob to the cleaners. When stolen securities got big, we used to have Wall Street...
View ArticleLocations from Goodfellas and Wiseguy Mapped
Every time I’ve watched Martin Scorsese’s Goodefellas (1991) (which is more than a few) one of the things that always strikes me is how familiar I am with the built environment of the film. I grew up...
View ArticleTrue Crime: Some Final Thoughts and Videos
I’m sad to say the True Crime Freshman Seminar Paul Bond and I taught this semester has come to an end. We watched the final vidoes last night, and they’re working on posting their final reflections to...
View ArticleBroadband: Make it a Commodity like…uh…a Pork Belly
Click image for Simpson’s take on Enron scam I just finished watching the 2005 documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, and it reinforces David Simon’s theory of America as Horror Show. What’s...
View ArticleFrom Mansonism to Bundyism
The 1976 TV movie Helter Skelter ends on a fear-mongering tear about “the social compost heap” from which Charles Manson sprang that may lead to an even more “virulent strain” of “Mansonism.” [This...
View ArticleCharlie’s Angels: The Short Case
Truecrimers Sara Akbari, Meredith Fiero, Gloriana Smith, and Jack Harris did an excellent job on their second video assignment. Back in week 10 they did an excellent presentation on Jack Webb’s telling...
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