Violence in America: The History of Crime (Violence, Cooperation, Peace)

Book Overview

This third edition of Violence in America is a completely new book with all 12 chapters of this volume written specifically for it. These chapters survey a wealth of new research on the long-term dynamics of murder and other crimes of violence. The contributors identify and diagnose the circumstances of recurring epidemics of violent crime that have swept the social landscape of the United States in the last 150 years, including waves of immigration, the social dislocation of war, and growing concentrations of urban poverty. They also evaluate the traits of political assassins and assess the pros and cons of gun control for reducing crime.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803932278
• ISBN13: 9780803932272
• Release Date: June 1989
• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Length: 280 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.0" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

Solid Research on the History of Violence in America

The collection of case studies, in Part I of this two-part series on violence in America, adequately sets the historical scene for volume II, which deals in a historically sweeping way with protest, rebellion and reform. While much of the material in volume I now needs updating, for its time, it was seminal and groundbreaking, following as it did in the quake of the race riots in the aftermath of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. A great deal of what appears in part I are "empirical case studies" of violence in the U.S. compared with that in other countries, Europe in particular. And although I take issue with one of its main conclusions (that the differences between violence in Europe and the U.S. is more of degree than kind), the studies themselves are well researched, sharply drawn, and tightly woven, if somewhat too narrowly focused for my taste. However, each taken individually is a five star effort. Were I unfamiliar with professor Gurr's impressive and much larger corpus of work on international violence, I might be inclined to criticize the case studies as being much too narrowly focused to draw any general systemic conclusions about violence in the nation more generally. But since I am familiar with his work, I will restrict my comments to a single passing comment about "case study research in general." As others have noted before me, sufficiently restricted, case studies "tell us more and more about less and less." In fact, that is the feeling one gets when completing the two volume set. As the editor noted in the preface, "the most intractable source of social and political conflict in our nation and in its history remains the resistance of Black Americans to their inferior status and the efforts of whites to keep them there." Yet, only three chapters are devoted to the issue of race, and a great deal is devoted to a comparative analysis with other nations. One could argue that this emphasis on comparative analysis is at the very least misplaced; and that, in doing so, it misses the bigger picture, the larger panoramic Gestalt of the under-girding role that race and racism has played and continues to play in enabling American violence. In this same vein, one could also argue that the narrow focus on "empirically-based case studies," the sensitivity of not looking too deeply into all sides of the issue of racial violence, and the failure to reveal a comprehensive view of American violence, are not unrelated. For this reason, I believe these volumes would have been immeasurably enriched had some of the less empirically-based, more anecdotal pieces, done much later by David T. Courtwright (in his book "Violent Land"), been used. Sometimes, putting flesh and bones on the empirical models in case studies can "seal the deal." But this is academic nitpicking in the extreme. These are very, very valuable contributions to better understanding the role violence plays in American culture. Five stars.