"In Beating the Devil's Game, Katherine Ramsland traces the development from thirteenth-century Chinese studies of decomposition rates through the flowering of science during the Renaissance and its veritable explosion during the era of Newtonian physics in the nineteenth century, up to the marvels of the present day and beyond. Along the way, she introduces us to fascinating forensic pioneers such as Spain's Mathieu Orfila, the father of toxicology; Eugene Francois Vidocq, the criminal-turned-detective who founded the Parisian Surete; and current trailblazers like William Bass, whose fully integrated program in entomology, anthropology, and pathology at the Forensic Anthropology Center has galvanized the field. These are visionaries who have persisted in raising investigative standards - and whose efforts keep us just steps ahead of increasingly sophisticated criminals."--BOOK JACKET.
Setting / LocationFrance
Story Era1800s / Victorian
Protagonist / CoreBeating the devil's game Lead Character
Nutcracker begins at the ballet but tells the story of a seemingly wholesome all-American family, whose tranquil life's surface erupted in shocking acts of avarice, theft and murder. The victim was Franklin Bradshaw, Mormon self-made millionaire, workaholic. The killer was Bradshaw's grandson, prep school student. The architect of the crime was said to be Frances Schreuder, Bradshaw's daughter, devoted patron of the ballet, who used her father's money to buy a prestigious place in New York's cultural elite and who came to view George Balanchine as her true "father." Making extensive use of her exclusive access to certain materials and sources, Shana Alexander traces the intricate history of this crime from its genesis among the luxury high-rises of Manhattan to a bloody culmination in a dusty Salt Lake City warehouse. She follows the winding four-year police hunt, which began in procedural confusion and was carried out ultimately by smart, devoted - and lucky - detective work. She takes us behind the scenes of trials, their startling defenses and verdicts, and into the minds of a few people who carried family games too far.
The Skeleton Crew provides an entree into the gritty and tumultuous world of Sherlock Holmes-wannabes who race to beat out law enforcement -- and one another -- at matching missing persons with unidentified remains. In America today, upwards of forty thousand people are dead and unaccounted for. These murder, suicide, and accident victims, separated from their names, are being adopted by the bizarre online world of amateur sleuths. It's DIY CSI by ordinary citizens equipped only with laptops and a knack for puzzles.
"The Late Romantic Era treats the period bounded by the 1848 revolutions and the outbreak of World War I. It examines several musical dimensions of the bourgeois cultural ascendancy of the second half of the 19th century - the growth of independent institutions of music-making, the consolidation of a standard classical repertory and the emergence of increasingly specific repertories of popular music, professional and amateur. Single chapters on particular countries or regions are framed by pairs of chapters on Vienna, Paris and the German cities. In an opening chapter Dr Samson places the later geographical surveys within a thematic context which embraces social and economic change, political ideology and the climate of ideas."--Amazon.com.
The first new biography of America's foremost woman of letters in twenty years, No Gifts from Chance presents an Edith Wharton for our times. Far from the emotionally withdrawn and neurasthenic victim of earlier portraits, she is revealed here as an ambitious, disciplined, and self-determined woman who fashioned life to her own desires. Drawing on government records, legal and medical documents, and recently opened collections of Wharton's letters, Shari Benstocks̀ biography offers new information on what have been called the key mysteries of her life: the question of her paternity, her troubled relations with her mother and older brothers, her marriage to manic-depressive Teddy Wharton, and her extramarital affair with Morton Fullerton. No Gifts from Chance also examines long-ignored facets of Wharton's life - her complex and often calculating relationships with publishers, her internationally acclaimed charitable work during World War I, and the poignant story of her ultimate financial distress that contributed to her death, a story told here for the first time. At the center of this biography is Wharton's writing life. No Gifts from Chance charts her immense literary productivity (some forty-seven books, including The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, and Ethan Frome), tracking her writing processes from notebook entries through editorial revisions and examining the critical reception of her narrative fiction, poetry, travel writing, literary and cultural criticism, and memoir. Here, too, is a rare glimpse of the intricate relationship between the writer's public reputation and her private life, from her lonely literary apprenticeship in late-Victorian America to her emergence as a literary figure in Edwardian England and Belle Epoque Paris, when she developed enduring friendships with Henry James and Bernard Berenson, to her Age of Acclaim as America's most respected writer during the postwar jazz age. A magisterial Edith Wharton dominates these pages: astute and tough-minded in business, passionate and sexually confident in love, audacious and prolific in her art, principled and courageous in her life. This is the story of an artist who had no role models in a society that feared creative and independent women, but who triumphantly defied convention and made herself into America's first great and most beloved woman novelist.
Beating the devil's game by Katherine Ramsland | Literally Just Books
