Author: Benjamin Rachlin
Publisher: Back Bay Books
ISBN: 9780316311502
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
One of the Best Books of 2017: National Public Radio, San Francisco Chronicle, Library Journal, Shelf Awareness "Remarkable . . . Captivating . . . Rachlin is a skilled storyteller." --New York Times Book Review "A gripping legal-thriller mystery . . . Profoundly elevates good-cause advocacy to greater heights--to where innocent lives are saved." --USA Today "A crisply written page turner." --NPR A gripping account of one man's long road to freedom that will forever change how we understand our criminal justice system During the last three decades, more than two thousand American citizens have been wrongfully convicted. Ghost of the Innocent Man brings us one of the most dramatic of those cases and provides the clearest picture yet of the national scourge of wrongful conviction and of the opportunity for meaningful reform. When the final gavel clapped in a rural southern courtroom in the summer of 1988, Willie J. Grimes, a gentle spirit with no record of violence, was shocked and devastated to be convicted of first-degree rape and sentenced to life imprisonment. Here is the story of this everyman and his extraordinary quarter-century-long journey to freedom, told in breathtaking and sympathetic detail, from the botched evidence and suspect testimony that led to his incarceration to the tireless efforts to prove his innocence and the identity of the true perpetrator. These were spearheaded by his relentless champion, Christine Mumma, a cofounder of North Carolina's Innocence Inquiry Commission. That commission--unprecedented at its inception in 2006--remains a model organization unlike any other in the country, and one now responsible for a growing number of exonerations. With meticulous, prismatic research and pulse-quickening prose, Benjamin Rachlin presents one man's tragedy and triumph. The jarring and unsettling truth is that the story of Willie J. Grimes, for all its outrage, dignity, and grace, is not a unique travesty. But through the harrowing and suspenseful account of one life, told from the inside, we experience the full horror of wrongful conviction on a national scale. Ghost of the Innocent Man is both rare and essential, a masterwork of empathy. The book offers a profound reckoning not only with the shortcomings of our criminal justice system but also with its possibilities for redemption.
Author: Maryanne Vollers
Publisher: Little Brown & Company
ISBN: 9780316914857
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 411
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Book Description
An examination of a noted civil rights case involving the murder of an NAACP official and his killer's three trials draws comparisons between the case and the racial climate in the Deep South
Author: Susan Cooper
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1442481412
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
At the end of a winter-long journey into manhood, Little Hawk returns to find his village decimated by a white man's plague and soon, despite a fresh start, Little Hawk dies violently but his spirit remains trapped, seeing how his world changes.
Author: Brooks Blevins
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252094115
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
In 1929, in a remote county of the Arkansas Ozarks, the gruesome murder of harmonica-playing drifter Connie Franklin and the brutal rape of his teenaged fiancée captured the attention of a nation on the cusp of the Great Depression. National press from coast to coast ran stories of the sensational exploits of night-riding moonshiners, powerful "Barons of the Hills," and a world of feudal oppression in the isolation of the rugged Ozarks. The ensuing arrest of five local men for both crimes and the confusion and superstition surrounding the trial and conviction gave Stone County a dubious and short-lived notoriety. Closely examining how the story and its regional setting were interpreted by the media, Brooks Blevins recounts the gripping events of the murder investigation and trial, where a man claiming to be the murder victim--the "Ghost" of the Ozarks--appeared to testify. Local conditions in Stone County, which had no electricity and only one long-distance telephone line, frustrated the dozen or more reporters who found their way to the rural Ozarks, and the developments following the arrests often prompted reporters' caricatures of the region: accusations of imposture and insanity, revelations of hidden pasts and assumed names, and threats of widespread violence. Locating the past squarely within the major currents of American history, Ghost of the Ozarks: Murder and Memory in the Upland South paints a convincing backdrop to a story that, more than 80 years later, remains riddled with mystery.
Author: Karen Abbott
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0451498631
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 449
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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The epic true crime story of the most successful bootlegger in American history and the murder that shocked the nation, from the New York Times bestselling author of Sin in the Second City and Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy “Gatsby-era noir at its best.”—Erik Larson An ID Book Club Selection • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST HISTORY BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SMITHSONIAN In the early days of Prohibition, long before Al Capone became a household name, a German immigrant named George Remus quits practicing law and starts trafficking whiskey. Within two years he's a multi-millionaire. The press calls him "King of the Bootleggers," writing breathless stories about the Gatsby-esque events he and his glamorous second wife, Imogene, host at their Cincinnati mansion, with party favors ranging from diamond jewelry for the men to brand-new cars for the women. By the summer of 1921, Remus owns 35 percent of all the liquor in the United States. Pioneering prosecutor Mabel Walker Willebrandt is determined to bring him down. Willebrandt's bosses at the Justice Department hired her right out of law school, assuming she'd pose no real threat to the cozy relationship they maintain with Remus. Eager to prove them wrong, she dispatches her best investigator, Franklin Dodge, to look into his empire. It's a decision with deadly consequences. With the fledgling FBI on the case, Remus is quickly imprisoned for violating the Volstead Act. Her husband behind bars, Imogene begins an affair with Dodge. Together, they plot to ruin Remus, sparking a bitter feud that soon reaches the highest levels of government--and that can only end in murder. Combining deep historical research with novelistic flair, The Ghosts of Eden Park is the unforgettable, stranger-than-fiction story of a rags-to-riches entrepreneur and a long-forgotten heroine, of the excesses and absurdities of the Jazz Age, and of the infinite human capacity to deceive. Praise for The Ghosts of Eden Park “An exhaustively researched, hugely entertaining work of popular history that . . . exhumes a colorful crew of once-celebrated characters and restores them to full-blooded life. . . . [Abbott’s] métier is narrative nonfiction and—as this vibrant, enormously readable book makes clear—she is one of the masters of the art.”—The Wall Street Journal “Satisfyingly sensational and thoroughly researched.”—The Columbus Dispatch “Absorbing . . . a Prohibition-era page-turner.”—Chicago Tribune
Author: C. L. Shore
Publisher: SterlingHouse Publisher
ISBN: 9781585010233
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 217
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Book Description
From early spring through late fall, nearly one hundred thousand people hike or bike the Ghost Town Trail that winds its way through the Laurel Highlands of Pennsylvania. Its beauty is legendary and so are its ghosts. To solve the mysteries of the trail, renowned ghostologist, C. L. Shore, Ph.D., and her "Ghost Crew" are called in to investigate the strange conditions and uncanny occurrences on the trail that have local residents screaming in fear. What Dr. Shore and the Ghost Crew discover is both shocking and unbelievable as the ghosts reveal the secrets of their deaths. Fortunately, the group of ghostbusters are able to help some of the lost and lonely spirits pass over to the next dimension. Sadly, there are many who remain earthbound, unable to find their way home. Perhaps you can help them find peace by walking the path with them for a little while. Don't be afraid...they won't hurt you. Much. Whether you believe in the supernatural or not, do yourself a favor: Read Ghost Tales from the Ghost Trail. Examine the photographs of disembodied spirits and the locations of ghostly sights included in the book. Then be prepared to shiver.
Author: Tananarive Due
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781607014539
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
"In her debut collection of short fiction, Due takes us to Gracetown, a small Florida town that has both literal and figurative ghost; into future scenarios that seem all too real; and provides empathetic portraits of those whose lives are touched by Otherness"--Amazon.com.
Author: Stephen Feuchtwang
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110223562
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 222
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Book Description
It has been said that Chinese government was, until the republican period, government through li. Li is the untranslatable word covering appropriate conduct toward others, from the guest rituals of imperial diplomacy to the hospitality offered to guests in the homes of ordinary people. It also covers the centring of self in relation to the flows and objects in a landscape or a built environment, including the world beyond the spans of human and other lives. It is prevalent under the republican regimes of China and Taiwan in the forming and maintaining of personal relations, in the respect for ancestors, and especially in the continuing rituals of address to gods, of command to demons, and of charity to neglected souls. The concept of ‛religion’ does not grasp this, neither does the concept of ‛ritual’, yet li undoubtedly refers to a figuration of a universe and of place in the world as encompassing as any body of rite and magic or of any religion. Through studies of Chinese gods and ghosts this book challenges theories of religion based on a supreme god and that god’s prophets, as well as those like Hinduism based on mythical figures from epics, and offers another conception of humanity and the world, distinct from that conveyed by the rituals of other classical anthropological theories.
Author: Leon Zitzer
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 0595408516
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 481
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Book Description
Judas and Jewish leaders. Continually tried and condemned for Jesus' death. This book exonerates them and ends the longest running witch trial in history. The search for the true circumstances of Jesus' death is an intellectual detective story. The clues are all in words in the texts of the well-known Gospels and they're in the prejudices that blinded us to the obvious answer. This is not a tale about intrigue in the antiquities market. Nor is it about looking for secret documents buried in a cave. This is rather a tale about scholarly self-deception in reading the Gospels, Jewish history, and themselves. If the historical, Jewish Jesus has been buried at all, it is beneath our prejudices and fears. Uncover these and he stands before you, hidden in plain sight. That may not be the usual sort of detective story but it is as genuine a mystery as ever there was. It's worth solving. If you're dying to know the complete solution, it's all there in a nutshell in Chapter 5. If you feel a need to wade into this more slowly, start with Chapter 1. I'll meet up with you again at the end of the book.
Author: John William Sayer
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674001848
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 328
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Book Description
This study of the Wounded Knee trials demonstrates the impact that legal institutions and the media have on political dissent. Sayer draws on court records, news reports, and interviews to show how both the defense and the prosecution had to respond continually to legal constraints, media coverage, and political events outside the courtroom.
