Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, The Denial of Death explores how people and cultures around the world have reacted to the concept of death from celebrated cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker.Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1974 and the culmination of a life’s work, The Denial of Death is Ernest Becker’s brilliant and impassioned answer to the “why” of human existence. In bold contrast to the predominant Freudian school of thought, Becker tackles t...

The Jack-Roller tells the story of Stanley, a pseudonym Clifford Shaw gave to his informant and co-author, Michael Peter Majer. Stanley was sixteen years old when Shaw met him in 1923 and had recently been released from the Illinois State Reformatory at Pontiac, after serving a one-year sentence for burglary and jack-rolling (mugging),Vivid, authentic, this is the autobiography of a delinquent—his experiences, influences, attitudes, and values. The Jack-Roller hel...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Unfair succinctly and persuasively recounts cutting-edge research testifying to the faulty and inaccurate procedures that underpin virtually all aspects of our criminal justice system, illustrating many with case studies.”—The Boston GlobeA child is gunned down by a police officer; an investigator ignores critical clues in a case; an innocent man confesses to a crime he did not commit; a jury acquits a killer....

A man murders the first four infants he fathers with his lover, then tries again with a fifth. Two men have three things in common: each commits what seems like a perfect murder, each marries his victim's wife far too soon, each has an overdue appointment with the gallows. A man cuts up the body of his victim into little pieces and gets away with the crime until he slaughters another neighbour six years later.Practically Perfect details the crimes of killers who very nearl...

Herland is a utopian novel from 1915, written by feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The book describes an isolated society composed entirely of white European women who reproduce via parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction). The result is an ideal social order, free of war, conflict and domination. It first appeared as a serial in Perkins' monthly magazine Forerunner. Gilman followed Herland with a sequel, With Her in Ourland. Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

This landmark study offers a rogues' gallery of women—from the Colonial Era to the 20th century—who answered abuse and oppression with murder: "A classic" ( Gloria Steinem).Women rarely resort to murder. But when they do, they are likely to kill their intimates: husbands, lovers, or children. In Women Who Kill, journalist Ann Jones explores these homicidal patters and what they reflect about women and our culture. She considers notorious cases suc...

The true crime story of the Gilded Age revenge killing that shocked New York City and the world—from a New York Times–bestselling author."A terrifically entertaining work of popular history: swiftly paced, richly evocative, engrossing from the first page." — Wall Street JournalIn 1901 Evelyn Nesbit, a sixteen-year-old chorus girl in the musical Florodora, dined alone with the architect Stanford White in his town hou...

First published in 1890, Jacob Riis's remarkable study of the horrendous living conditions of the poor in New York City had an immediate and extraordinary impact on society, inspiring reforms that affected the lives of millions of people.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across gen...

New York’s Lower East Side was said to be the most densely populated square mile on earth in the 1890s. Health inspectors called the neighborhood “the suicide ward.” Diarrhea epidemics raged each summer, killing thousands of children. Sweatshop babies with smallpox and typhus dozed in garment heaps destined for fashionable shops. Desperate mothers paced the streets to soothe their feverish children and white mourning cloths hung from every building. A third of the children living there die...

"Looks at the twists and turns in the investigation, possible perpetrators . . . as well as some of the good that eventually came out of this tragedy" ( Wauwatosa Patch).In 1925, the peaceful Milwaukee suburb of Wauwatosa found itself involved in mystery and horror. Eight-year-old Arthur 'Buddy' Schumacher Jr. was last seen by three of his friends after they hopped off a freight train they'd jumped to get a ride to a nearby swimming hole. For seven weeks, ...

The “monumental” (The Washington Post), field-defining history of gay life in New York City in the early to mid-20th centuryGay New York brilliantly shatters the myth that before the 1960s gay life existed in the closet, where all gay men were isolated, invisible, and ashamed. Based on years of research in diaries, letters, newspaper stories, and police reports, George Chauncey describes the saloons, speakeasies, and streets where queer m...

A wise, witty, spirited collection of short pieces and essays by the inimitable E. B. White.Written for the New Yorker over a span of forty-nine years, these 161 pieces show White’s changing concerns and development as a writer. In matchless style White writes about everything from cicadas to Khrushchev, from Thoreau to hyphens, from academic freedom to lipstick, from New York garbagemen to the sparrow, from Maine to the space age, from the Constitution to Harold R...