"Americans have had an uneasy fascination with crime since the earliest European settlements in the New World, and right from the start true crime became a dominant genre in American writing. True Crime: An American Anthology offers the first comprehensive look at the many ways in which American writers have explored crime in a multitude of aspects: the dark motives that spur it, the shock of its impact on society, the effort to make sense of the violent extremes of human behavior. "The human community," as Harold Schechter notes in his introduction, "finding itself under assault from within, searches desperately for a framework or context to explain the apparently unexplainable.""--Jacket.

"A special publication of the Library of America." "350 years of brilliant writing about dark deeds"--Jacket. Includes index.

Hanging of John Billington /William Bradford -- Pillars of salt / Cotton Mather -- Murder of a daughter / Benjamin Franklin -- An account of a murder committed by Mr. J- Y-, upon his family, in December, A.D. 1781 / anonymous -- "A crime more atrocious and horrible than any other" / Timothy Dwight -- The record of crimes in the United States / Jesse Strang -- The recent tragedy / James Gordon Bennett -- "A show of wax-figures" / Nathaniel Hawthorne -- Remarkable case of arrest for murder / Abraham Lincoln -- Crime news from California / Ambrose Bierce -- From Roughing it / Mark Twain -- Jesse Harding Pomeroy, the boy fiend / anonymous -- Gibbeted / Lafcadio Hearn -- A memorable murder / Celia Thaxter -- The trial of Guiteau / José Martí -- The murder of Annie Downey, alias "Curly Tom" / Thomas Byrnes -- Hunting human game / Frank Norris -- The Hossack murder / Susan Glaspell -- Murder ballads : Poor Naomi ; Stackalee ; The murder of Grace Brown ; Belle Gunness ; The murder at Fall River ; Trail's end -- Mrs. Cordelia Botkin, murderess / Thomas S. Duke -- Hell benders, or The story of a wayside tavern / Edmund Pearson -- The eternal blonde / Damon Runyon -- From The gangs of New York / Herbert Asbury -- The mystery of the hansom cab / Alexander Woollcott -- Execution / Joseph Mitchell -- More and better psychopaths / H.L. Mencken -- Dreiser sees error in Edwards defense / Theodore Dreiser -- Sex and the all-American boy / Dorothy Kilgallen -- Miss Ferber views "vultures" at trial / Edna Ferber -- Ditch of doom / Jim Thompson -- A sort of genius / James Thurber -- Veteran kills 12 in mad rampage on Camden Street / Meyer Berger -- Butcher's dozen / John Bartlow Martin -- The case of the scattered Dutchman / A.J. Liebling -- The trial of Ruby McCollum / Zora Neale Hurston -- The black dahlia / Jack Webb -- The life and death of Caryl Chessman / Elizabeth Hardwick -- The shambles of Ed Gein / Robert Bloch -- Superman's crime : Loeb and Leopold / Miriam Allen deFord -- Eight girls, all pretty, all nurses, all slain / W.T. Brannon -- The pied piper of Tucson / Don Moser -- A stranger with a camera / Calvin Trillin -- Charlie Manson's home on the range / Gay Talese -- Then it all came down / Truman Capote -- "Son of Sam" / Jimmy Breslin -- The Turner-Stompanato killing : a family affair / Jay Robert Nash -- The Medea of Kew Gardens Hills / Albert Borowitz -- My mother's killer / James Ellroy -- Young love / Ann Rule -- Nightmare on Elm Drive / Dominick Dunne.