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Science Informer - For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Chicago
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List Price: $27.95
Our Price: $15.38
Your Save: $ 12.57 ( 45% )
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Manufacturer: Harper
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.1523092
EAN: 9780060781002
ISBN: 0060781009
Label: Harper
Manufacturer: Harper
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 560
Publication Date: 2008-08-01
Publisher: Harper
Release Date: 2008-08-05
Studio: Harper
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A tale of two indulged, hedonistic boys
Comment: When I discovered this book, I was very excited. I have never read a comprehensive book on the Leopold and Loeb case before; I've only seen it mentioned in other books on true crime. And previously, I have only seen one to two paragraphs in these other books devoted to this case, which was a shocking crime in Chicago in 1924.
Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold both came from priviledged, indulgent backgrounds, and when they met in private school, they became friends. Loeb was the gregarious one of the duo who was fascinated by crime, and approached Leopold about commiting the perfect murder/kidnapping. The kidnapping/murder is accomplished. The body of the victim is discovered before Loeb and Leopold reap the financial benefits of their murder as intended. Leopold leaves behind at the crime scene a pair of eyeglasses
that ultimately lead to his and Loeb's capture. The current DA of Chicago, Robert Crowe, states publically that he intends to pursue the death penalty in this case.
The author Simon Baatz points out that the murder of Bobby Franks is only some of what lead the public in Chicago in the 1920s to be so fascinated by this case. The other part that is so interesting is in the defense of the assailants. The Loeb and Leopold families hire Clarence DArrow, arguably the most influencial attorney of the day, to defend their sons and to possibly save their lives from a certain death sentence. Mr. DArrow's defense of Loeb and Leopold-I won't give away this part of the book because it is a key element-seals Darrow's reputation as a leading defense attorney. Loeb and Leopold's defense, and their lives after the trial, are also painstakingly detailed in this book.
The events leading up to the murder, and the aftermath are rivetingly written about in this book. Also, the murder is discussed in an intellectual way that compares the ramifications of the murder in comparison to the backdrop of theprosperous roaring twenties in America. Mr. Baatz writing style is easy to read and there is never a dull moment in his description of this historical event.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Why Was This Crime Committed? The Answer Is In the Title of the Book
Comment: I've read Evil Summer by John Theodore and found it to be a gripping true crime book. I also found For The Thrill of It by Simon Baatz to be a compelling book on the senseless murder of Bobby Franks by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb on May 21, 1924. For The Thrill of It is a more detailed account, but I did find the courtroom drama between the state and prosecution to be somewhat tedious. Each side presented authorities on psychiatry to support their point of view, and it turned out that neither side influenced the judge. Both Leopold and Loeb needed the other to carry out their dastardly crime. Throughout the book the question comes up as to why these two teenagers threw away their futures. The answer can be found in the title of the book, For The Thrill of It. Neither Leopold nor Loeb committed the crime expecting to get caught. This was to be the perfect crime. They wanted to be equally guilty by each pulling on an end of a rope in killing their victim. They deviated from their plan at the outset by Richard Loeb swinging the blows with a chisel on the head of their victim Bobby Franks. Unbelievably Franks was a second cousin of his murderer Richard Loeb, and had played tennis together the day before. I especially liked the author's choice of placing photos in the book at their appropriate location in the story. I found the map of the Kenwood area of Chicago showing where Franks, Leopold, and Loeb lived, along with the nearby Harvard School for Boys which their victim attended, to be very helpful. My only drawback to the book is the dragged out courtroom question regarding insanity and mental disease. However, this is a very worthwhile addition to your crime library.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Leopold and Loeb: "Crime and Punishment"
Comment: Baatz, Simon. "For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder that Shocked Chicago", Harper, 2008.
Leopold and Loeb: "Crime and Punishment"
Amos Lassen
I have always been fascinated by the Leopold and Loeb affair and it is without a doubt one of the most shocking crimes in the history of America. From the moment I read Meyer Levin's "Compulsion", I have been compelled to read whatever I can about the entire business. Simon Baatz, professor of law and history takes a look at how the crime affected not only those who perpetrated it but America in his new book, "For the Thrill of It" and it is on my best books list.
Most of us have trouble understanding how two young and wealthy men can still live in the memory of this country for murdering a young boy in 1924 just "for the thrill of it. It seems that they went far beyond the conventions of good and evil and it has been suggested that the crime was better psychologically explained--an attempt to cover up feelings of rage and inadequacy, cultural boredom and sexual passion. What Leopold and Loeb claimed was their motive was only an iota of what the reasons were.
Baatz spends time looking at the psychological and psychiatric testimony of three witnesses--Bernard Gleuck, William White and William Healy who, like the attorney for the defense, Clarence Darrow, felt that criminal law depended upon psychology and that criminals who were victims of some kind of social disorder should be treated and not punished. Even though Darrow offered a guilty plea it was his hope that the sentence might be lessened by proving to the jury and judge that the crime was committed while Leopold and Loeb were insane. We know that this strategy failed and that the two were given 99 years. Loeb was killed in prison and Leopold was eventually paroled and died as an expatriate in Puerto Rico.
Baatz gives us the history of the crime and takes us into the courtroom where he has a good look at the plea of insanity. I was totally into the narrative and the book is a fascinating look at human behavior and the criminal process. The research is excellent and the book is extremely readable. Baatz can tell a story and bring the reader in. The crime is imbedded in our imaginations and the fact that the plea of insanity is something we still talk about. It is good to have this record of the crime, the trial and what happened later. Baatz does not explain why anything happened but he does give us great detail about what happened. The book is something like what Truman Capote did with "In Cold Blood" and that is to create a non-fiction novel.
I have read several negative reviews of the book and I think that perhaps this is not the kind of book that appeals to those reviewers and I disagree with their evaluations. Of course I am somewhat biased as I have read everything I could about Leopold and Loeb. The crime they committed was so out of character for Jewish gay men to take part in but they did.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A great topic, the book could have been so much better.
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Those Crazy Kids
Comment: 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.
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Editorial Reviews:
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It was a crime that shocked the nation, a brutal murder in Chicago in 1924 of a child, by two wealthy college students who killed solely for the thrill of the experience. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb had first met several years earlier, and their friendship had blossomed into a love affair. Both were intellectuals—too smart, they believed, for the police to catch them. However, the police had recovered an important clue at the scene of the crime—a pair of eyeglasses—and soon both Leopold and Loeb were in the custody of Cook County. They confessed, and Robert Crowe, the state's attorney, announced to newspaper reporters that he had a hanging case. No defense, he believed, would save the two ruthless killers from the gallows. Set against the backdrop of the 1920s, a time of prosperity, self-indulgence, and hedonistic excess, For the Thrill of It draws the reader into a lost world, a world of speakeasies and flappers, of gangsters and gin parties, that existed when Chicago was a lawless city on the brink of anarchy. The rejection of morality, the worship of youth, and the obsession with sex had seemingly found their expression in this callous murder. But the murder is only half the story. After Leopold and Loeb were arrested, their families hired Clarence Darrow to defend their sons. Darrow, the most famous lawyer in America, aimed to save Leopold and Loeb from the death penalty by showing that the crime was the inevitable consequence of sexual and psychological abuse that each defendant had suffered during childhood at the hands of adults. Both boys, Darrow claimed, had experienced a compulsion to kill, and therefore, he appealed to the judge, they should be spared capital punishment. However, Darrow faced a worthy adversary in his prosecuting attorney: Robert Crowe was clever, cunning, and charismatic, with ambitions of becoming Chicago's next mayor—and he was determined to send Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb to their deaths. A masterful storyteller, Simon Baatz has written a gripping account of the infamous Leopold and Loeb case. Using court records and recently discovered transcripts, Baatz shows how the pathological relationship between Leopold and Loeb inexorably led to their crime. This thrilling narrative of murder and mystery in the Jazz Age will keep the reader in a continual state of suspense as the story twists and turns its way to an unexpected conclusion.
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