Don’t Shoot
by David M. Kennedy
(Bloomsbury, $28)
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
This criminologist’s new work isn’t “your typical book of wonkery,” said John Buntin in The Washington Post. David Kennedy became a star as one of the architects of the so-called Boston Miracle, a 1990s drop in crime attributed to the police’s targeting of gun violence and engaging in dialogue with gangs. Part memoir and part polemic, Don’t Shoot combines a “gripping account of a life spent combating violence” and an “impassioned” argument against the practice of mass incarceration.
The Collapse of American Criminal Justice
by William J. Stuntz
(Harvard, $35)
William Stuntz’s new book rails against an American criminal-justice system that has become “one of the most punitive in the world without providing a corresponding level of public safety,” said Paul G. Cassell in The Wall Street Journal. After a period of low incarceration rates, the U.S. now leads the world in that category. Stuntz’s arguments for reform don’t all add up, but they “deserve wide discussion.” Whether the system has “collapsed” is debatable, “but few would argue that it can’t be improved.”
The City That Became Safe
by Franklin E. Zimring
(Oxford, $30)
Beginning in 1991, “something completely unexpected happened with New York City crime,” said Steve Chapman in the Chicago Tribune. Eighty percent of it vanished, marking the largest urban crime decline ever recorded. Berkeley criminologist Franklin Zimring argues that the biggest factors were “focusing cops on high-crime areas and closing down outdoor drug markets.” But he acknowledges that just how New York went from urban dystopia to metropolitan Mayberry remains partially a mystery.
The Justice Cascade
by Kathryn Sikkink
(Norton, $28)
The 1998 arrest of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet marked “a turning point” in the history of human rights, said G. John Ikenberry in Foreign Affairs. Rarely in past centuries were former or sitting heads of state prosecuted in court for human-rights crimes committed while in power. In Kathryn Sikkink’s telling, activists in Europe and the U.S. turned the tide. Her book is “an inspiring story of the rise and spread of a set of ideas and norms”—what the author calls a “justice cascade.”
Continue reading for free
We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.
Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.
-
Rupert Murdoch steps aside at the empire he builtFeature The last of the old-style 'press barons' has retired. What is he leaving behind?
-
Net zero: the looming 'energy gap'
Talking point UK has made strides in decarbonising UK's electricity supply but government has few plans to expand capacity
-
Britain's gambling habit: are we dicing with serious damage?
The Explainer The UK's betting industry has become a multibillion-pound juggernaut
-
Also of interest...in picture books for grown-ups
feature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
-
Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
-
The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
-
Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
-
Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
-
Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
-
You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
-
Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”