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The Mammoth Book of Illustrated Crime: A Photographic History
Charles Manson, Bonnie and Clyde, O. J. Simpson, Serpico, Sirhan Sirhan, Timothy McVeigh, John Christie, Lorena Bobbit, Ruth Ellis, the Gang of Four, the Great Train Robbery, and the Hitler diaries—these are only thirteen of the many and manifold cases featured in this new, copiously illustrated Mammoth volume drawn from the annals of twentieth-century crime. Researched by editor Colin Wilson, an authority on crime and the criminal mind, and with access to the extensive resources of the international photo collection at the Hulton Getty Picture Library, the book offers more than 500 pages of unforgettable, and sometimes rare, images that cover a widely diverse range of subjects, from art theft to arson, from con men to cannibalism, from forensics to executions, from censorship to terrorists. As comprehensive in its scope as it is shocking in its photographic details, this illustrated chronicle brings dramatic immediacy to some of the most notorious events of the last century. One photo presents serial killer Dr. Marcel Petiot's stash of his forty-seven victims' clothes. Another image captures the attempted assassination of President Reagan, his Secret Service agents diving to protect him, while still another illustrates the heavy hand of justice with a body reeling from the bullets of the firing squad. Here, too, are photographs of victims, vital clues, grisly crime scenes, mass murders, sex scandals, gangsters, spies, and innumerable other subjects that arrest the eye and graphically illuminate the consequences of crime.
512 pages, Paperback
First published January 9, 2002
About the author
Colin Wilson
458 books1,302 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Colin Henry Wilson was born and raised in Leicester, England, U.K. He left school at 16, worked in factories and various occupations, and read in his spare time. When Wilson was 24, Gollancz published The Outsider (1956) which examines the role of the social 'outsider' in seminal works of various key literary and cultural figures. These include Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, William James, T. E. Lawrence, Vaslav Nijinsky and Vincent Van Gogh and Wilson discusses his perception of Social alienation in their work. The book was a best seller and helped popularize existentialism in Britain. Critical praise though, was short-lived and Wilson was soon widely criticized.
Wilson's works after The Outsider focused on positive aspects of human psychology, such as peak experiences and the narrowness of consciousness. He admired the humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow and corresponded with him. Wilson wrote The War Against Sleep: The Philosophy of Gurdjieff on the life, work and philosophy of G. I. Gurdjieff and an accessible introduction to the Greek-Armenian mystic in 1980. He argues throughout his work that the existentialist focus on defeat or nausea is only a partial representation of reality and that there is no particular reason for accepting it. Wilson views normal, everyday consciousness buffeted by the moment, as "blinkered" and argues that it should not be accepted as showing us the truth about reality. This blinkering has some evolutionary advantages in that it stops us from being completely immersed in wonder, or in the huge stream of events, and hence unable to act. However, to live properly we need to access more than this everyday consciousness. Wilson believes that our peak experiences of joy and meaningfulness are as real as our experiences of angst and, since we are more fully alive at these moments, they are more real. These experiences can be cultivated through concentration, paying attention, relaxation and certain types of work.
Colin Henry Wilson was born and raised in Leicester, England, U.K. He left school at 16, worked in factories and various occupations, and read in his spare time. When Wilson was 24, Gollancz published The Outsider (1956) which examines the role of the social 'outsider' in seminal works of various key literary and cultural figures. These include Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, William James, T. E. Lawrence, Vaslav Nijinsky and Vincent Van Gogh and Wilson discusses his perception of Social alienation in their work. The book was a best seller and helped popularize existentialism in Britain. Critical praise though, was short-lived and Wilson was soon widely criticized.
Wilson's works after The Outsider focused on positive aspects of human psychology, such as peak experiences and the narrowness of consciousness. He admired the humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow and corresponded with him. Wilson wrote The War Against Sleep: The Philosophy of Gurdjieff on the life, work and philosophy of G. I. Gurdjieff and an accessible introduction to the Greek-Armenian mystic in 1980. He argues throughout his work that the existentialist focus on defeat or nausea is only a partial representation of reality and that there is no particular reason for accepting it. Wilson views normal, everyday consciousness buffeted by the moment, as "blinkered" and argues that it should not be accepted as showing us the truth about reality. This blinkering has some evolutionary advantages in that it stops us from being completely immersed in wonder, or in the huge stream of events, and hence unable to act. However, to live properly we need to access more than this everyday consciousness. Wilson believes that our peak experiences of joy and meaningfulness are as real as our experiences of angst and, since we are more fully alive at these moments, they are more real. These experiences can be cultivated through concentration, paying attention, relaxation and certain types of work.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 19, 2012
Like I said in an update, I'm not real impressed. I don't know if I built it up in my head (I know it's been a few years at least I've waited to read this) or something else entirely.
A good number of the photos are replicated elsewhere. Who hasn't seen Franz Muller's faceshot? Or William Kemmler strapped into the chair in N.Y. in 1890? (The first person executed in this manner as anyone who reads this material knows.) Louis Higgins hanging from the bridge after being lynched in 1907.
I wanted things I hadn't seen, stories I didn't know.
As it is the only part I've really become interested in so far are the few Holocaust related photos/stories. The photo of the Jewish prisoners brain after having had "research" performed I've seen somewhere but I never fail to be interested with anything related to the Holocaust. Everyone's heard stories of the soap the Nazi's made from the fat of people they'd killed. Seeing a photo of such soap is another matter altogether. Again, it's an exact copy of a picture I've seen but again, shocking.
So far I've been basically skimming, I look at each page and if the photo and/or title of the story jumps out at me I'll read the accompanying caption. (I've seen little more than what can be called a caption so far.)
I'll finish it at least in this manner.
Some photos I'd never seen before and the story I hadn't heard. On page 92, in the Outlaws section, a photo shows a man, Rafael Lopez, presumably posing for the camera in 1913. I say presumably because moments after the photo was snapped Lopez shot and severely wounded the photographer.
On page 246 a man is shown holding two photos of Dutch civilians after being murdered by Nazi's. the man is a captured German officer and if you really look at his face you can see a track down the side if his face from a tear falling.
I agree with my friend Love who also reviewed this book that the photo on pages 258 and 259 is rare and I'm glad I got the chance to see it. Anyone who reads this type of material knows who WeeGee is, real name Arthur Fellig, but I'd never seen a photograph of him. That may have been the upshot of the book for me personally.
Actually, the one other photo if say was worth the wait for the book and worth reading it for is on pages 268 and 269. The photos shows us a man, a freed Russian slave laborer as he's pointing directly at a former Nazi guard. According to the Russian this guard was particularly brutal. After reading so much on the Holocaust and seeing so many photos this is one I'll always remember. The German mans eyes are so telling as to his feelings.
I think I saw this elsewhere at some point but the photo and story on pages 280 and 281 are of Marcel Petoit's home-made gas chamber. It's enough to fill you with terror.
I did learn a few new things also though. Page 428 "Acid Stash" tells about a police haul in Wales in 1978 of a massive amount of acid. The author tells how the Catholic Church used two groups of seminary students for research in 1965. One group used prayer to "achieve divine bliss" while the other group... well, they used acid. It was "learned" that the religious visions seen while tripping "could not be disallowed as possibly true revelations from God."
Another thing I learned was that acid may not be as dangerous as we tend to think. Apparently there is isn't much proof, if any proof, that acid, or LSD as it's called by most, makes its users violent or reckless. I know this to be true personally from having used it when I was younger but honestly I kind of assumed since then I just got extremely lucky when in fact it seems like I wasn't the exception but more likely the norm.
Another thing previously unknown to me - our government conducted a test in the early 1980's that acid actually increases IQ on first-time users by up to 10%. Interesting. It should also be mentioned that habitual users or people suffering from an imbalance are risking a serious psychological breakdown. I don't know. This is news to me although if someone had asked me before reading this my thoughts on the danger of acid I'd have answered honestly that it's not something I'd take a chance with now, it's not something I'd want my daughter to ever play around with, but from my own personal experience as well as the experiences of friends I used the drug with, I saw no evidence of it being dangerous in any way.
Most people who have had some introduction to the drug, or maybe even any drug, have heard the acid "stories". The author included the one about the person thinking they could fly and ending up splattered on the ground. The one that was most widely spread when I was a teenager was the orange one. A person took a hit - just one hit mind you - and ended up going from a good trip to a bad trip. The bad trip ended up being 6-8 hours of thinking they were an orange and by the last few hours the person - er, uh, orange, thought people wanted to peel it. So yeah, basically everyone in my high school knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who had a cousin or great-grandmother who was an orange in a mental hospital. But like I said, I knew no one acid ever affected like this.
I did have a "bad" trip one day and I didn't want to settle in for the hours I knew were still ahead but it wasn't anything to where I'd have gone crazy over it. I did get high once with a group of friends, one of whom was very racist against black people. I kind of intentionally goaded him from time to time (granted, goading someone while tripping isn't a very nice thing to do) and I turned on BET and started rapping along. He (predictably) got annoyed and starting talking shit so I talked it right back. I told him I didn't like being white, that I wanted to be black, that black people were so much better than us lowly white folks, etc. Yeah well, he ripped off every shed of clothing he had on, ran into the street outside and starting shouting, at the top of his lungs, how much he hated black people. Looking back he could have been killed. Or at least arrested. I think some friends retrieved him. I don't know for sure. I kept watching videos. But that's my wildest acid story and I think people will agree in pales in comparison with the orange/person story.
The Jonestown Massacre is mentioned along with the main photo that's been shown with the story since it happened in 1978.
The mention of Henry Lee Lucas threw me slightly. I had no idea that Texas authorities let Lucas read files before asking questions and him "confessing" to hundreds of murders. Shame on them. How many murderers the country over went free over this?
And why did Senator George W. Bush commute his sentence? Why? I mean, what is the purpose exactly of a jury or judge sentencing for someone to come along and commute the sentence given. I'm sure Lucas' victims families were thrilled.
Ramirez is shown here and if you don't know the full story there - and want to - read The Night Stalker. It's not a slim book but trust me, the way Philip Carlo writes it doesn't matter. If you're like me you'll be through it in no time. Ramirez's story - and Ramirez - are enough to give any nightmares for the rest of their days.
Oh jeez, how could I almost forget. I can now say I've seen a picture of a severed penis. And yeah. It's about as gross as you can get. (I don't mean to speak like this about a victim but it must be said - unless the wife whacked it off at the tip poor John Bobbitt had plenty o' problems before she ever even did that. If that's even a quarter of the full length of his penis I feel sorry for him AND her.)
OJ and the Unabomber are included of course along with plenty of others you've heard of. Plenty of stories and people I hadn't heard of also though but it wasn't enough to interest me. I need more than one or two bland paragraphs personally. I'm definitely in the minority though because most of the ratings and reviews on this are great.
The Brussels Anti-Paedophile Demonstration of 1996 was interesting but again, just not enough info for me to get really involved. I guess this is why I prefer my true crime like the average t.c. book.
I wouldn't try to sway anyone away from reading it though. It's written and set up well, just not for me.
Not sure yet whether I'll count it towards the years challenge. It won't matter as I'll make my number but I'll probably leave it out just the same
**I'm not going to count it to the challenge. Just decided.**
A good number of the photos are replicated elsewhere. Who hasn't seen Franz Muller's faceshot? Or William Kemmler strapped into the chair in N.Y. in 1890? (The first person executed in this manner as anyone who reads this material knows.) Louis Higgins hanging from the bridge after being lynched in 1907.
I wanted things I hadn't seen, stories I didn't know.
As it is the only part I've really become interested in so far are the few Holocaust related photos/stories. The photo of the Jewish prisoners brain after having had "research" performed I've seen somewhere but I never fail to be interested with anything related to the Holocaust. Everyone's heard stories of the soap the Nazi's made from the fat of people they'd killed. Seeing a photo of such soap is another matter altogether. Again, it's an exact copy of a picture I've seen but again, shocking.
So far I've been basically skimming, I look at each page and if the photo and/or title of the story jumps out at me I'll read the accompanying caption. (I've seen little more than what can be called a caption so far.)
I'll finish it at least in this manner.
Some photos I'd never seen before and the story I hadn't heard. On page 92, in the Outlaws section, a photo shows a man, Rafael Lopez, presumably posing for the camera in 1913. I say presumably because moments after the photo was snapped Lopez shot and severely wounded the photographer.
On page 246 a man is shown holding two photos of Dutch civilians after being murdered by Nazi's. the man is a captured German officer and if you really look at his face you can see a track down the side if his face from a tear falling.
I agree with my friend Love who also reviewed this book that the photo on pages 258 and 259 is rare and I'm glad I got the chance to see it. Anyone who reads this type of material knows who WeeGee is, real name Arthur Fellig, but I'd never seen a photograph of him. That may have been the upshot of the book for me personally.
Actually, the one other photo if say was worth the wait for the book and worth reading it for is on pages 268 and 269. The photos shows us a man, a freed Russian slave laborer as he's pointing directly at a former Nazi guard. According to the Russian this guard was particularly brutal. After reading so much on the Holocaust and seeing so many photos this is one I'll always remember. The German mans eyes are so telling as to his feelings.
I think I saw this elsewhere at some point but the photo and story on pages 280 and 281 are of Marcel Petoit's home-made gas chamber. It's enough to fill you with terror.
I did learn a few new things also though. Page 428 "Acid Stash" tells about a police haul in Wales in 1978 of a massive amount of acid. The author tells how the Catholic Church used two groups of seminary students for research in 1965. One group used prayer to "achieve divine bliss" while the other group... well, they used acid. It was "learned" that the religious visions seen while tripping "could not be disallowed as possibly true revelations from God."
Another thing I learned was that acid may not be as dangerous as we tend to think. Apparently there is isn't much proof, if any proof, that acid, or LSD as it's called by most, makes its users violent or reckless. I know this to be true personally from having used it when I was younger but honestly I kind of assumed since then I just got extremely lucky when in fact it seems like I wasn't the exception but more likely the norm.
Another thing previously unknown to me - our government conducted a test in the early 1980's that acid actually increases IQ on first-time users by up to 10%. Interesting. It should also be mentioned that habitual users or people suffering from an imbalance are risking a serious psychological breakdown. I don't know. This is news to me although if someone had asked me before reading this my thoughts on the danger of acid I'd have answered honestly that it's not something I'd take a chance with now, it's not something I'd want my daughter to ever play around with, but from my own personal experience as well as the experiences of friends I used the drug with, I saw no evidence of it being dangerous in any way.
Most people who have had some introduction to the drug, or maybe even any drug, have heard the acid "stories". The author included the one about the person thinking they could fly and ending up splattered on the ground. The one that was most widely spread when I was a teenager was the orange one. A person took a hit - just one hit mind you - and ended up going from a good trip to a bad trip. The bad trip ended up being 6-8 hours of thinking they were an orange and by the last few hours the person - er, uh, orange, thought people wanted to peel it. So yeah, basically everyone in my high school knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who had a cousin or great-grandmother who was an orange in a mental hospital. But like I said, I knew no one acid ever affected like this.
I did have a "bad" trip one day and I didn't want to settle in for the hours I knew were still ahead but it wasn't anything to where I'd have gone crazy over it. I did get high once with a group of friends, one of whom was very racist against black people. I kind of intentionally goaded him from time to time (granted, goading someone while tripping isn't a very nice thing to do) and I turned on BET and started rapping along. He (predictably) got annoyed and starting talking shit so I talked it right back. I told him I didn't like being white, that I wanted to be black, that black people were so much better than us lowly white folks, etc. Yeah well, he ripped off every shed of clothing he had on, ran into the street outside and starting shouting, at the top of his lungs, how much he hated black people. Looking back he could have been killed. Or at least arrested. I think some friends retrieved him. I don't know for sure. I kept watching videos. But that's my wildest acid story and I think people will agree in pales in comparison with the orange/person story.
The Jonestown Massacre is mentioned along with the main photo that's been shown with the story since it happened in 1978.
The mention of Henry Lee Lucas threw me slightly. I had no idea that Texas authorities let Lucas read files before asking questions and him "confessing" to hundreds of murders. Shame on them. How many murderers the country over went free over this?
And why did Senator George W. Bush commute his sentence? Why? I mean, what is the purpose exactly of a jury or judge sentencing for someone to come along and commute the sentence given. I'm sure Lucas' victims families were thrilled.
Ramirez is shown here and if you don't know the full story there - and want to - read The Night Stalker. It's not a slim book but trust me, the way Philip Carlo writes it doesn't matter. If you're like me you'll be through it in no time. Ramirez's story - and Ramirez - are enough to give any nightmares for the rest of their days.
Oh jeez, how could I almost forget. I can now say I've seen a picture of a severed penis. And yeah. It's about as gross as you can get. (I don't mean to speak like this about a victim but it must be said - unless the wife whacked it off at the tip poor John Bobbitt had plenty o' problems before she ever even did that. If that's even a quarter of the full length of his penis I feel sorry for him AND her.)
OJ and the Unabomber are included of course along with plenty of others you've heard of. Plenty of stories and people I hadn't heard of also though but it wasn't enough to interest me. I need more than one or two bland paragraphs personally. I'm definitely in the minority though because most of the ratings and reviews on this are great.
The Brussels Anti-Paedophile Demonstration of 1996 was interesting but again, just not enough info for me to get really involved. I guess this is why I prefer my true crime like the average t.c. book.
I wouldn't try to sway anyone away from reading it though. It's written and set up well, just not for me.
Not sure yet whether I'll count it towards the years challenge. It won't matter as I'll make my number but I'll probably leave it out just the same
**I'm not going to count it to the challenge. Just decided.**
May 17, 2011
This was a very fast read..Over 500 pages half are pics (real crime scenes ect). Then about a half page reading on each picture. If your into that type book it's a good one. I was interested from page one. Some facts I knew but had never seen the pictures to go along with them. I saw lots of pictures from a famous crime scene photografer back in the 30's?? WeeGee. Nice to see him in one of the pictures (very rare I bet). That's about all i have on this one.
September 20, 2020
Short read because most of the pages are pictures, which is the purpose of this book. If you don't have a weak constitution and have a passion for crime, this is a book for you. I would've given it a 5-star review if it included more details and info about the cases inside, but overall, a great read for crime fans.
August 27, 2007
This book will not give you the be-all and end-all stories of each crimes they report upon, so don't go into it thinking you'll get expansive explanations. It's an interesting read if you're into CSI stuff, but I wouldn't recommend it for the faint of heart. There are some gory pics, but unfortunately I've seen worse! It's an easy read -- it took me a couple days probably of just poring through the pages. Don't read late at night home by yourself!!
November 26, 2007
Bought this for Craig but I read through it first. I'm using read loosely as its really a picture book for the morbidly curious with short descriptions for each picture and short forewards for each crime time period. Interesting book to just pick up and glance at, doesn't take any dedication.
December 19, 2007
Is it wrong that this stuff fascinates me? Who knows. But what I do know is that even as a fan of this genre, some of the pictures in this book were a little too grotesque, even for me. Informative none the less.
January 26, 2008
Totally awesome if you love to understand crimes form all decades. I love this book because it as great photos that are hard to find too.
October 16, 2009
Wow, it's like a South Park episode where I say "this is so wrong" and then laugh and laugh. Filled with pictures and the stories behind them. Just fascinating.
February 17, 2011
Really quick read. Learned facts I didn't know about cases I did know about. Easy to to sit and read a few stories since they are such short stories.
July 27, 2016
Real crime scene details, real crime scene photos. Fast read for those who can tolerate gory images and details. Extremely interesting read and very well researched and documented.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews