Hard cover book, with dust jacket. 851+ clean, smudge-free pages. Like new condition. Corners are sharp, have no bumping. Light shelf wear, as would be expected from in-store display. Jacket in pristine condition. Binding is tight, straight and un-cracked. Pages are clean with no markings. No Remainder marks.
My parents got me this book as a present one Christmas in the late 1990s. At the time I was thinking about what I might want to do with my life and it crossed my mind I might want to be a prosecutor—that didn’t happen. Nevertheless, my parents bought me this book which is a fascinating piece of American history. Great American Trials spans the trials of Anne Hutchinson and O.J. Simpson. In this book several prominent Americans are featured here as defendants such as Aaron Burr, John Brown, Andrew Johnson, and Al Capone. The famed lawyer Clarence Darrow makes several appearances in the book. The book is full of criminals, victims, the guilty who were brought to justice, the guilty who escaped justice, the wrongly accused who were exonerated, and the wrongly accused who were condemned.
Each case is divided into three sections. They begin with a historical summery about the defendant and the world that they lived. The second section goes into the case itself, describing how the court, prosecutors and defense attorneys’ actions all affected the outcome of the trial. The final section of the case talks about the aftermath. What happened to the defendant and how that case affected the nation’s culture and judicial system are discussed when needed.
In the end, Great American Trails presents over 360 years of history and 200 trials into a book just over 900 pages long. It nevertheless is a quick read, because you are presented with one fascinating case after another.