Criminology

From the celebrated neurobiologist and primatologist, a landmark, genre-defining examination of human behavior, both good and bad, and an answer to the question: Why do we do the things we do? Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic....

From one of the world’s leading experts on unconscious racial bias come stories, science, and strategies to address one of the central controversies of our time...

In The Killer Across the Table, John E. Douglas, legendary FBI criminal profiler, number one New York Times best-selling author, and inspiration for Netflix’s Mindhunter, delves into the lives and crimes of four of the most disturbing and complex predatory killers....

Nicholas Pileggi's vivid, unvarnished, journalistic chronicle of the life of Henry Hill - the working-class Brooklyn kid who knew from age twelve that "to be a wiseguy was to own the world," who grew up to live the highs and lows of the mafia gangster's life....

The definitive and surprising true story of one of history’s most notorious prisons—and the remarkable cast of POWs who tried relentlessly to escape their captors, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Spy and the Traitor....

Prosecuting attorney in the Manson trial Vincent Bugliosi held a unique insider's position in one of the most baffling and horrifying cases of the 20th century....

The revised and updated edition of Lt. Col. Dave Grossman's modern classic about the psychology of combat, hailed by the Washington Post as "an illuminating account of how soldiers learn to kill and how they live with the experiences of having killed"....

Solitary is the unforgettable life story of a man who served more than four decades in solitary confinement - in a six-foot by nine-foot cell, 23 hours a day, in notorious Angola prison in Louisiana - all for a crime he did not commit....

An electric and unforgettable memoir about a young woman's journey—from the ice rink, to addiction and a prison sentence, to the newsroom—emerging with a fierce determination to expose the broken system she experienced....

In the late hours of July 22, 1991, Detective Patrick "Pat" Kennedy of the Milwaukee Police Department was asked to respond to a possible homicide. Little did he know that he would soon be delving into the dark mind of one of America's most notorious serial killers....

The Sun Does Shine is an arresting audiobook memoir of hope, love, justice, and the power of reading, written by a man who spent 30 years on death row for a crime he didn't commit....

From a small town in Mexico to the boardrooms of Big Pharma to main streets nationwide, an explosive and shocking account of addiction in the heartland of America....

In Drug Use for Grown-Ups, Dr. Carl L. Hart draws on decades of research and his own personal experience to argue definitively that the criminalization and demonization of drug use - not drugs themselves - have been a tremendous scourge on America....

The most common triggers for homicide are fear, rage, revenge, money, lust, and, more rarely, sheer madness. This isn’t an exact science, of course. Any given murder can have multiple triggers. Sex and revenge seem to be common partners in crime....

The dead talk - to the right listener. They can tell us all about themselves: where they came from, how they lived, how they died, and, of course, who killed them....

In early 2000, Adnan Syed was convicted and sentenced to life plus 30 years for the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, a high school senior in Baltimore, Maryland....

In Journey into Darkness, John Douglas, who headed the FBI's elite Investigative Support Unit, profiles vicious serial killers, rapists, and child molesters. He is straightforward, blunt, often irreverent, and outspoken, but takes pains not to glorify any of these murderers....

In July 1995, San Jose Mercury-News reporter Gary Webb found the Big One - the blockbuster story every journalist secretly dreams about - without even looking for it....

Chasing the Scream lays bare what we really have been chasing in our century of drug war - in our hunger for drugs, and in our attempt to destroy them....

In the summer of 1987, Johnny Boone set out to grow and harvest one of the greatest outdoor marijuana crops in modern times....

Bugliosi has devoted almost 20 years of his life to this project and is determined to show that, despite the overwhelming popular perception, Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy and acted alone....

Getting someone to tell the truth is an essential skill that very few people possess....

From the New York Times best-selling author of Dreamland, a searing follow-up that explores the terrifying next stages of the opioid epidemic and the quiet yet ardent stories of community repair....

Think you can’t get conned? Think again. The New York Times best-selling author of Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes explains how to spot the con before they spot you. A compelling investigation into the minds, motives, and methods of con artists....

Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing is the story of Ted Conover's rookie year as a guard at Sing Sing....

Despite its omnipresence and long history, imprisonment is a deeply troubling practice. In the United States and elsewhere, prison conditions are inhumane, prisoners are treated without dignity, and sentences are extremely harsh. Mass incarceration and its devastating impact on black communities have been widely condemned as neoslavery or “the new Jim Crow.” Can the practice of imprisonment be reformed, or does justice require it to be ended altogether?

An empowering memoir of courage and hope in the face of injustice—and the basis for the ABC television show, For Life—Marked for Life is the true story of Isaac Wright Jr.’s battle to win his freedom after being wrongfully imprisoned for crimes he didn’t commit, and a critical indictment of America’s judicial system. 

One New Haven summer evening in 2006, a retired grandfather was shot point-blank by a young stranger. A hasty police investigation culminated in innocent sixteen-year-old Bobby being sentenced to prison for thirty-eight years. New Haven native Nicholas Dawidoff returned home and spent eight years reporting the deeper story of this injustice, and what it reveals about the enduring legacies of social and economic disparity. In The Other Side of Prospect, he has produced an immersive portrait of a seminal community in an old American city now beset by division and gun violence.

Riveting, honest, and raw, I Can Take It From Here recounts Lisa Forbes's harrowing journey into darkness—including a fourteen-year-long stint in a maximum-security prison—and her fierce resolve to understand the effects of the trauma she endured, to take personal responsibility for her actions, and to ensure that her history does not dictate her destiny.

Jack the Ripper. Jeffrey Dahmer. John Wayne Gacy. Locusta of Gaul. If that last name doesn’t seem to fit with the others, it’s likely because our modern society largely believes that serial killers are a recent phenomenon. Not so, argues Debbie Feltonin fact, there’s ample evidence to show that serial killers stalked the ancient world just as they do the modern one.

Michael Santos helps audiences understand how to overcome the struggle of a lengthy prison term. Listeners get to experience the mindset of a 23-year-old young man that goes into prison at the start of America’s War on Drugs. They see how decisions that Santos made at different stages in the journey opened opportunities for a life of growth, fulfillment, and meaning.

In the early hours of March 1, 2015, Danish police received an alarming call from a nurse at a provincial hospital. She suspected her colleague, fellow nurse Christina Aistrup Hansen, of deliberately killing patients—and she feared it had just happened again. Soon, other coworkers revealed their own concerns about Hansen. Indeed, some had been harboring suspicions about her for years . . . So why had no one come forward sooner?

Perhaps no other television show captures our innate fascination with crime and criminals better than the original Forensic Files. Examining true crime cases from murders to insurance fraud, hit-and-runs to kidnappings, every case featured on the show is solved in large part with the help of forensic science like DNA evidence. In Forensic Files Now, author Rebecca Reisner shares her own gripping retellings of 40 favorite cases profiled on the show along with fascinating updates adapted from her popular blog, ForensicFilesNow.com.

In 2004, the murder of a middle-aged couple in their village bungalow lifted the lid on the great untold story of British organized crime. The slaughter of Joan and John Stirland revealed an evil empire of powerful ganglords, contract killings, and police corruption. At its dark heart was the East Midlands city of Nottingham.

What's Prison For? examines the “incarceration” part of mass incarceration. Our prisons remain a shameful waste of lives and money, feeding a pathological cycle of poverty, community dysfunction, crime and hopelessness. What is the alternative? This book makes the case for better rehabilitation and examines attempts to assure that people return from prison better equipped than when they arrived for the challenges life presents.

Eric A. Stanley and Nat Smith bring together current and former prisoners, activists, and academics for a new understanding of how race, gender, ability, and sexuality are lived under the crushing weight of captivity. Through a politic of gender self-determination, this collection argues that trans/queer liberation and prison abolition must be grown together. From rioting against police violence and critiquing hate crimes legislation, to prisoners demanding access to HIV medications, and far beyond, Captive Genders is a challenge for us all to join the struggle. 

Legal scholar Daniel S. Medwed argues that our justice system’s stringent procedural rules are largely to blame for the ongoing punishment of the innocent. Even when there is strong evidence of a miscarriage of justice, rigid guidelines, bias, and deference toward lower courts all too often prevent exoneration. Offering clear explanations of legal procedures alongside heart-wrenching stories of their devastating impact, Barred exposes how the system is stacked against the innocent—and makes a powerful call for change. 

In this third edition of Border Games, Peter Andreas charts the rise and transformation in policing the flow of drugs and migrants across the US-Mexico border. Recent border crackdowns and wall-building campaigns, he argues, are not unprecedented. Rather, they are the outcome of an escalatory dynamic already in motion—but now played out on a far bigger stage, with higher stakes, and in new security and political contexts. Focusing on the power of symbolic politics and policy feedback effects, Andreas traces the logic behind such buildup.

Armed-encounters expert and police trainer Brian McKenna shares his expertise in a series of gripping stories involving real-life police shootouts. Step into the shoes of police officers who have run toward the sound of gunfire, who have faced attacks by deadly assailants, and who have lived to share the tale. But this book is more than just stories about courageous cops. Each story is followed by McKenna’s expert analysis of its important learning points, especially concerning how and why the officers use force and the legal aspects of self-defense and the defense of others. 

In 2013, South African businessman Daniel Janse van Rensburg set off to the West African country to finalise a legitimate airline contract with a local politician. Within days, Daniel was arrested by the local Rapid Intervention Force and detained without trial in the island’s infamous ‘Guantanamo’ cells, and was later taken to Black Beach. This is his remarkable story of survival over nearly two years, made possible by his unwavering faith and the humanity of a few fellow inmates. In this thrilling first-person narrative, Daniel relives his ordeal.