A true story of a bank robber and a chilling car chase worthy of an Elmore Leonard novel or a Brian De Palma movie. Like many new arrivals to Canada, Hermann Beier came to this country with big dreams – visions of a wide-open country where hard work and entrepreneurial flair would make him rich. A charismatic handyman, martial arts teacher, and small business owner, he charmed women and earned the respect of men. He was loved in his community of Alliston, Ontario, and had a plan to make a...
Despite claims frompundits and politicians that we now live in a post-racial America, people seemto keep finding ways to talk about race—from celebrations of the inaugurationof the first Black president to resurgent debates about policeprofiling, race and racism remain salient features of our world. When facedwith fervent anti-immigration sentiments, record incarceration rates of Blacks andLatinos, and deepening socio-economic disparities, a new question has eruptedin the last decade:...
Quiet pleasant communities, sparkling under the clear blue skies of Alberta, have witnessed bloody murders and violent mayhem. From a wide variety of accounts, Babara Smith has selected eight intriguing stories that will astound and amaze you. Mystery still surrounds the fate of pro golfer Frank Willey who disappeared in 1962. Two men were convicted of his murder, but his body has never been found. No suspect, however, was ever found in the case of MaryAnn Plett. The pretty, young real-estate...
Dynasties and Interludes provides a comprehensive and unique overview of elections and voting in Canada from Confederation to the recent spate of minority governments. Its principal argument is that the Canadian political landscape has consisted of long periods of hegemony of a single party and/or leader (dynasties), punctuated by short, sharp disruptions brought about by the sudden rise of new parties, leaders, or social movements (interludes). Changes in the composition of the electorate and...
In the winter of 1996, Steve Forbes–publisher, heir, and presidential candidate–captured the American imagination with his proposal for a flat tax. But while Mr. Forbes claimed that such a tax would level the economic playing field by eliminating countless loopholes and miles of red tape, his actual proposal betrayed such claims to fairness by overtaxing workers and undertaxing financial capital. In the face of recent proposals for dramatic and far-reaching tax reform, Taxing America takes a...
Twisted tales of killers who almost got away with perfect murders. A man murders the first four infants he fathers with his lover, then tries again with a fifth. Two men have three things in common: each commits what seems like a perfect murder, each marries his victim’s wife far too soon, each has an overdue appointment with the gallows. A man cuts up the body of his victim into little pieces and gets away with the crime until he slaughters another neighbour six years later. Practically...
Winner of the 2008 Outstanding Book Award by the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Michelle Oberman and Cheryl L. Meyer don’t write for news magazines or prime-time investigative television shows, but the stories they tell hold the same fascination. When Mothers Kill is compelling. In a clear, direct fashion the authors recount what they have learned from interviewing women imprisoned for killing their children. Readers will be shocked and outraged—as much by the violence...
In the lean and anxious years following World War II, Munich society became obsessed with the moral condition of its youth. Initially born of the economic and social disruption of the war years, a preoccupation with juvenile delinquency progressed into a full-blown panic over the hypothetical threat that young men and women posed to postwar stability. As Martin Kalb shows in this fascinating study, constructs like the rowdy young boy and the sexually deviant girl served as proxies for the...
John Wilson came to Canada from Scotland in 1912, leaving his wife and family with the promise to return in a year. In 1914 he joined the Mounties, and while stationed in Saskatchewan village, he caught TB and fell hopelessly in love with the young woman who took care of him. He would do anything for her, anything at all.Winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for Non-Fiction, The Secret Lives of Sgt. John Wilson is played out against a backdrop of catastrophic events—World War I, economic...
Since the end of World War II, the ongoing efforts aimed at criminal prosecution, restitution, and other forms of justice in the wake of the Holocaust have constituted one of the most significant episodes in the history of human rights and international law. As such, they have attracted sustained attention from historians and legal scholars. This edited collection substantially enlarges the topical and disciplinary scope of this burgeoning field, exploring such varied subjects as literary...
Disorder and instability are matters of continuing public concern. Terrorism, as a threat to global order, has been added to preoccupations with political unrest, deviance and crime. Such considerations have prompted the return to the classic anthropological issues of order and disorder. Examining order within the political and legal spheres and in contrasting local settings, the papers in this volume highlight its complex and contested nature. Elaborate displays of order seem necessary to...
Since the nineteenth century, the development of international humanitarian law has been marked by complex entanglements of legal theory, historical trauma, criminal prosecution, historiography, and politics. All of these factors have played a role in changing views on the applicability of international law and human-rights ideas to state-organized violence, which in turn have been largely driven by transnational responses to German state crimes. Here, Annette Weinke gives a groundbreaking...