 | For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Chicago
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1
Simon Baatz
Harper
Book
Hardcover
560
1
2008-08-01
18125
$27.95
0060781009
9780060781002
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Cover
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 2008-11-10 - A great topic, the book could have been so much better.
The author was my history professor. Simon Baatz is a much better lecturer than a writer. His lectures were so interesting on topics of crime. This book is okay borderline boring. I read better books (even on this case). I think he should have gave the book some feeling vs. being so dry and detail oriented only.
I only read this book because he was my professor. If he wasn't I doubt I would have read it.
2008-10-21 - Those Crazy Kids
If all you know about Leopold and Loeb is what you learned from the movie Swoon, prepare to be underwhelmed. The real life boys weren't nearly so avant-garde or attractive or even interesting. They're aren't even as interesting as their renamed versions in the movie Compulsion. The sad fact is that the most interesting thing about these two was the senseless murder they committed. Doctors, lawyers, reporters and writers have been trying ever since to make some sense of the murder - all with limited results.
Simon Baatz takes a very different approach. He doesn't try to explain WHY anything happened but he does go into great detail about WHAT happened. He tells the story in an "as it happened" way, complete with the thoughts of the participants, almost reminiscent of Capote's In Cold Blood. Which is not to say that Baatz achieves the heights or the insights Capote did. And how could he? Capote spoke to the murderers, Leopold and Loeb are long dead.
This is a risky narrative choice and combined with Baatz's tendency to cut away from the main story to detail (and I do mean detail) another case with direct bearing on or implications for L&L's case it's not always a success. Either we're "in the moment" or we're not, it's hard to have it both ways. It's even harder when those segues are tangents about the prosecutor's career or Clarence Darrow's defense of the LA Times bombers. (After half a dozen of these "shocking" Chicago murders you have to wonder what exactly was in the water in Chicago back then.) Baatz does draw on a mountain of available documentation to recreate L&L's interrogation and trials, even their crime itself and often does create a sense of immediacy.
I'm still hard pressed to give this book anything better than 3 stars. Baatz's prose is decent, his research seems impeccable but ... it just doesn't add up to much. I feel well-informed now on what happened in the case (and I knew just the bare outlines before) but the nagging sense of why or what it means is more acute. Aside from the fact that Nathan "Babe" Leopold and Richard Loeb were complete jerks and that Richard Loeb wasn't the "genius" he was purported to be, I'm not sure that being better informed has helped me to draw any conclusions about the case on my own. It remains not so much enigmatic as pointless.
If you're very interested in the Leopold and Loeb case but don't know the details or if you have an interest in the evolution of insanity defenses, this book might be of interest to you. (Not having read any other books on the case I can't offer a comparison.) If you're a fan of popular history or true crime this might be of interest if you're already interested in the era, otherwise this is probably too specialized for general interest. Either way, take advantage of Amazon's preview option before purchasing - the narrative method didn't bother me but it might be annoying for some readers.
Kindle note: there's evidence here of yet another crime, that of a publisher failing to edit the ebook version. Nearly all the hyphens from the printed text are absent from the Kindle version along with many commas and semicolons. You get used to it after awhile but it certainly doesn't help to get bogged down by an apparent run-on-sentence when the narrative is supposed to convey a sense of immediacy.
 2008-09-24 - Don't waste your time...better material exists on this topic
Absolutely abysmal work. The author describes the circumstances of this crime without any creativity or sense, nor is the reader given any insight to anything resembling "thrill", as suggested in the title. Rather a simple text-book style play by play is given of the murder, as well as a slight glimpse into the nature of the sexual relationship between the murderers. The reader is never given a real sense of the scope of this crime, as well as an idea of how it was perceived within the historical context of early 20th century Chicago.
2008-09-24 - uninspired, bland, boring...
Baatz definitely is somebody who is not capable of treating this subject matter with any degree of intrigue. The writing style is tired, complete with run-ons and fragmented sentences. Given the interesting history of the crime and everything sorrounding it, it is amazing what a snooze fest the author has written. If he had given it a few more drafts, perhaps something better may have materialized. However as it now stands, this is an amateur effort at best.
 2008-09-13 - The Legend of Leopold and Loeb Comes To Life!
Despite the fact that Bobby Franks's grizzly murder took place in 1924, the subsequent trial of Leopold and Loeb has never let go of our collective imaginations. When one reads For the Thrill of It, one can easily understand why. The murder of Bobby Franks by wealthy teenagers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb touces on many issues that are still fervently talked about today: the limits of 'insanity' as a mitigating factor in sentencing, the morality of the death penalty, whether individuals are capable of free choice or victims of biological and environmental factors.
For those unfamiliar, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were wealthy and well-educated teenagers, both with very bizarre childhoods, who developed a bizarre and dependent friendhip (and love affair). These two anti-social teenagers decided that it might be fun to kidnap, torture, and kill - they debated on whether rape should be added - a schoolboy selected at random. Their desire was to create the perfect crime. (See for yourself whether Nathan Leopol is not one of the most chilling and perplexing characters you have ever read about!)
At this, hey failed. The bloodied body was found within 48 hours, and the boys' additional plan to extort ransom from the boy's father failed as well. What ensued was a wildly controversial trial that captured national attention, as legendary defense attorney Clarance Darrow attempted to avoid the death penalty for the two obviously guilty boys. The argument: the two boys were victims not only of their bizarre childhoods, but biological peculiarities (this was the age of endocrinology).
This book is a fascinating recount of the murder, the trial, and the aftermath. Baatz writing is captivating and the book reads like fiction. Baatz is as entertaining as he is thorough. We are not only treated to a thoughtful recount of the lives of Leopold, Loeb, and many other involved characters, but also of the state of the 1920s criminal justice system and the burgeoning field of psychiatry. Through all of this, we find out just how revolutionary the goings on of the trial of Leopold and Loeb were; it would not be an overstatement to say that many American ideas - views on the death penalty, human choice, and the nature of insanity - were challenged if not turned on their heads.
It is also a testament to Simon Baatz's acumen that this almost-600-page book never once seemed too long. All of the information given was necessary to the book's relentless forward motion. In the end, For the Thrill of It reads like a first rate murder mystery that allows its readers to learn quite a bit along the way.
This has been one of my favorite reads of the year.
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