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During the Great Depression, writers of True Crime could take the decade off: life was imitating art so dramatically they had nothing to add. In these pages historian Robert Underhill presents the most notorious criminals of 1930-1934: Wilbur Underhill, Alvin Karpis, the Barker Clan, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, the Barrows (Buck, Blanche, Clyde, and Bonnie), and John Dillinger along with supporting material on their henchmen and the rise of the FBI. Often armed better than the police, criminals of the 1930s committed deeds ranging from stealing chickens to kidnappings, bank robberies, and killing innocent victims. Yet such crimes were often taken in stride by avid readers. Cooperation among local, state and federal lawmen was rare as each sought to protect his own turf. Criminals and lawmen made mistakes battling one another, but in most cases the law triumphed and the wanted fugitive died under a hail of bullets. His death would start myths and raise his reputation to national status. The author of 'Against the Grain: Six Men Who Shaped America' and 'The Rise and Fall of Franklin D. Roosevelt' shows us another aspect of the Roosevelt era and portrays a series of figures who contributed to pop culture as well helping to shape the security forces in America. Robbing the banks and driving fast cars, they did what many Americans dreamed of, and gave a depressed populace some excitement to distract from everyday worries. With the Great Depression, some citizens came to regard bank robbers as modern Robin Hoods seeking to avenge depositors whose life earnings had been wiped out by a bank's failure or malfeasance by its owners. No small wonder that criminals were given colorful sobriquets and fact and fiction became intertwined. Underhill shows how such heists, and kidnappings especially, helped create the modern FBI, overcoming the complaints of those who alleged that a federal force was the first step toward an American Gestapo. The belief that federal government had nothing to do with fighting crime was rooted in the U.S. Constitution and its provisions for states' rights. Local police were expected to provide security and to apprehend criminals without Washington getting involved. In the big cities, Prohibition era mobsters still ruled, but in the Midwest especially, smaller bands, "gangsters," began to make headlines. They tended to be blue-collar criminals whose favorite targets were filling stations, grocery stores, and small town banks. Prior to 1930, corruption was rife and cooperation among local, state, and federal police was little to none; criminals often got away. Only in 1935 was the FBI formally anointed and its agents were permitted to carry guns. Now, there was a federal agency that could supply sheriffs all over the country with information on suspected criminals. By 1935, the hardest times of the Depression were beginning to ease and the thrill of watching these cops-and-robber stories play out was combined with a renewed interest in the lives of the rich and famous, previously scorned for their role in ripping off the average man. All in all, the early 1930s were a uniquely dramatic time for crime and crimestoppers in America.
This book delves into humanity’s compulsive need to valorize criminals. The criminal hero is a seductive figure, and audiences get a rather scopophilic pleasure in watching people behave badly. This book offers an analysis of the varied and vexing definitions of hero, criminal, and criminal heroes both historically and culturally. This book also examines the global presence, gendered complications, and gentle juxtapositions in criminal hero figures such as: Robin Hood, Breaking Bad, American Gods, American Vandal, Kabir, Plunkett and Macleane, Martha Stewart, Mary Read, Anne Bonny, Ocean’s 11, Ocean’s Eleven, and Let The Bullets Fly.
This book is an overview and analysis of the global tradition of the outlaw hero. The mythology and history of the outlaw hero is traced from the Roman Empire to the present, showing how both real and mythic figures have influenced social, political, economic and cultural outcomes in many times and places. The book also looks at the contemporary continuations of the outlaw hero mythology, not only in popular culture and everyday life, but also in the current outbreak of global terrorism. The book also presents a more general argument related to the importance of understanding folk and popular mythologies in historical contexts. Outlaw heroes have a strong purchase in high and popular culture, appearing in film, books, plays, music, drama, art, even ballet. To simply ignore and discard such powerful expressions without understanding their origins, persistence and especially their ongoing cultural consequences, is to refuse the opportunity to comprehend some profoundly important aspects of human behaviour. These issues are pursued through discussion of the processes through which real and mythical outlaw heroes are romanticised, sentimentalised, sanitised, commodified and mythologised. The result is a new position in the continuing controversy over the existence the 'social bandit' that highlights the central role of mythology in the creation and perpetuation of outlaw heroes.
From the infamous pirate Jean Laffite and the storied couple Bonnie and Clyde, to less familiar bandits like train-robber Eugene Bunch and suspected murderer Leather Britches Smith, Legendary Louisiana Outlaws explores Louisiana's most fascinating fugitives. In this entertaining volume, Keagan LeJeune draws from historical accounts and current folklore to examine the specific moments and legal climate that spawned these memorable characters. He shows how Laffite embodied Louisiana's shift from an entrenched French and Spanish legal system to an American one, and relates how the notorious groups like the West and Kimbrell Clan served as community leaders and law officers but covertly preyed on Louisiana's Neutral Strip residents until citizens took the law into their own hands. Likewise, the bootlegging Dunn brothers in Vinton, he explains, demonstrate folk justice's distinction between an acceptable criminal act (operating an illegal moonshine still) and an unacceptable one (cold-blooded murder). Recounting each outlaw's life, LeJeune also considers their motives for breaking the law as well as their attempts at evading capture. Running from authorities and trying to escape imprisonment or even death, these men and women often relied on the support of ordinary citizens, sympathetic in the face of oppressive and unfair laws. Through the lens of folk life, LeJeune's engaging narrative demonstrates how a justice system functions and changes and highlights Louisiana's particular challenges in adapting a system of law and order to work for everyone.
Not since Hunter Thompson's seminal Hells Angels: A Strange & Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs in 1967 has there been such a thorough account of the Angels. This book documents the gang's bumpy ride from its origins as a Stateside club for WWII fighter pilots to its freewheeling terror tactics of the early sixties, to its absurd flirtation with the hippie scene, to its current status as one of the most powerful underground organisations in North America, rivalling even the Mafia.
Provides an account of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb's killing of fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks, their celebrity, and their ultimate emergence as folk heroes.
The Watchman didn't arrive in a Batmobile but drove a tan, four-door Pontiac. He was in costume, of course—a trench coat, motorcycle gloves, army boots, a domino mask, and a red hooded sweatshirt emblazoned with a W logo. Journalist Tea Krulos had spoken to him over the phone but never face-to-mask. By the end of the interview, he wasn't sure if the Watchman was delightfully eccentric or completely crazy. But he was going to find out. Heroes in the Night traces Krulos's journey into the strange subculture of Real Life Superheroes, random citizens who have adopted comic book&–style personas and hit the streets to fight injustice. Some concentrate on humanitarian or activist missions—helping the homeless, gathering donations for food banks, or delivering toys to children—while others actively patrol their neighborhoods looking for crime to fight. By day, these modern Clark Kents work as dishwashers, pencil pushers, and executives in Fortune 500 companies. But by night, only the Shadow knows. Well, the Shadow and Tea Krulos. Through historical research, extensive interviews, and many long hours walking patrol in Brooklyn, Seattle, San Diego, Minneapolis, and Vancouver, British Columbia, Krulos discovered what being a RLSH is all about. He shares not only their shining, triumphant moments but some of their ill-advised, terrifying disasters as well. It's all part of the life of a superhero. As the Watchman explains, &“If everyone made little changes in what they did, gave a little more to charity, watched out for their neighbors, we wouldn't have the problems that we have.&”
This book is written in praise of the criminal; a unique kind of criminal, who is motivated not by personal gain, but ethical altruism. Deviant heroes are those individuals who violate unjust norms and laws, facing the repercussions of social control, effecting positive social change in the process. Using a method that examines how the biographies of individual deviants intersected with history, it probes how criminals and deviants have been on the leading edge of important, positive social changes and the creation of a more just, fair, and humane society. Brian Wolf concludes with an examination of the problem of conformity and how deviant heroism in everyday life may be a remedy for injustice in micro-level social contexts.