The Vietnam War was one of the most painful and divisive events in American history. The conflict, which ultimately took the lives of 58,000 Americans and more than three million Vietnamese, became a subject of bitter and impassioned debate. The most dramatic--and frequently the most enduring--efforts to define and articulate America's ill-fated involvement in Vietnam emerged from popular culture. American journalists, novelists, playwrights, poets, songwriters, and filmmakers--many of them eyewitnesses--have created powerful, heartfelt works documenting their thoughts and beliefs about the war. By examining those works, this book provides readers with a fascinating resource that explores America's ongoing struggle to assess the war and its legacies.

This encyclopedia includes 44 essays, each providing detailed information on an important film, song, or literary work about Vietnam. Each essay provides insights into the Vietnam-era experiences and views of the work's primary creative force, historical background on issues or events addressed in the work, discussion of the circumstances surrounding the creation of the work, and sources for further information. This book also includes an appendix listing of more than 275 films, songs, and literary works dealing with the war.

The inside story-from the organizer himself--of the largest unrecovered cash haul in history. This full account brings readers behind the heist memorialized in Goodfellas, a crime that has baffled law enforcement for decades. From Henry Hill himself, The Lufthansa Heist is the last book he worked on before his 2012 death. On December 11, 1978, a daring armed robbery rocked Kennedy Airport, resulting in the largest unrecovered cash haul in world history, totaling six million dollars. The perpetrators were never apprehended and thirteen people connected to the crime were murdered in homicides that, like the crime itself, remain unsolved to this day. The burglary has fascinated the public for years, dominating headlines around the globe due to the story's unending ravel of mysteries that baffled the authorities.One of the organizers of the sensational burglary, Henry Hill, who passed away in 2012, in collaboration with Daniel Simone, has penned an unprecedented "tell-all" about the robbery with never-before-unveiled details, particulars only known to an insider. In 2013, this infamous criminal act again flared up in the national news when five reputed gangsters were charged in connection to the robbery. This latest twist lends the project an extraordinary sense of timing, and the legal proceedings of the newly arrested suspects will unfold over the next year, continuing to keep the Lufthansa topic in the news.

The pleasant neighborhoods of the Crescenta Valley offer no hint of the many violent and heinous crimes that have occurred between the San Gabriel and Verdugo Mountains. But ties to such macabre episodes as the Onion Field murder and the search for the Hillside Strangler left lasting scars here. Infamous criminals such as mafia boss Joe "Iron Man" Ardizzone, red-light bandit Caryl Chessman and accused yacht bomber Beulah Overell have left a black eye on La Cresecenta's history--not to mention the "Rattlesnake Murder," "Female Bluebeard" and "Santa Claus Killer." Join historians Gary Keyes and Mike Lawler as they expose the crimes and criminals that have inflicted murder and mayhem in Glendale, La Crescenta, Montrose and La Canada Flintridge.

The historical context of family violence is explored, as well as the various forms of violence, their prevalence in specific stages of life, and responses to it made by the criminal justice system and other agencies. The linkage among child abuse, partner violence and elder abuse is scrutinized, and the usefulness of the life-course approach is couched in terms of its potential effect on policy implications; research methods that recognize the importance of life stages, trajectories, and transitions; and crime causation theories that can be enhanced by it.

Al Brady was an armed robber and murderer in the 1930s and became the FBI's Public Enemy #1. The crime spree of Brady and his gang brought them from the south and midwest to Maine. A hardware store owner in Bangor became suspicious when Brady requested a large supply of ammunition and paid with an equally large amount of cash, and notified police. The FBI was waiting in ambush for them when they arrived to pick up the ammo. The rest is history, as on October 12, 1937, Brady and an accomplice were killed in a hail of bullets in broad daylight in downtown Bangor. This spectacular public gun-battle has become an integral part of Maine lore. Now, historian Trudy Irene Scee tells the story, including Brady's growing up in Indiana, his criminal exploits, and what brought he and his cohorts to Maine.

On November 12, 1971, Bernard Patterson, a much decorated Vietnam War hero turned real-life version of Don Quixote, Butch Cassidy, and Robin Hood all rolled into one, robbed the Northern National Bank in Mars Hill, Maine. He escaped with $110,000; at the time, the largest bank robbery in the history of the state. A tunnel rat and paratrooper in Vietnam who rose to the rank of sergeant, he was awarded four bronze stars and recommended for a silver star for valor. He returned home to northern Maine broke and disillusioned. Wearing dark glasses, dressed in a Marx Brother's ankle length coat and wearing a blue wig, he robbed the bank, even though he was recognized by the elderly teller. He initially escaped by paddling a rubber raft down the Prestile Stream. This was the beginning of a comic, outrageous, implausible journey that took him across the United States, then to Europe and North Africa before finally surrendering to authorities in Scotland Yard after he had spent most of the money. Along the way, he lived a raucous life of wine and women while hobnobbing in aristocratic hangouts and giving money to those he perceived to be in need; all the time staying just a heartbeat ahead of law enforcement officials. He motor biked across Europe, hoodwinked border officials, bought a camel and got lost in the North African desert. Returned to the United States for prosecution, he was convicted and imprisoned. Released several years later, he moved back to northern Maine, where he continued to lead a reckless life that included running a "pot farm," until he died at age 56 in 2003. When asked by a friend why he had robbed the bank, he responded, "The VA wouldn't give me a loan, so I decided to take one out on my own."

Press coverage of the 1888 mutilation murders attributed to Jack the Ripper was of necessity filled with gaps and silences, for the killer remained unknown and Victorian journalists had little experience reporting serial murders and sex crimes. This engrossing book examines how fifteen London newspapers - dailies and weeklies, highbrow and lowbrow - presented the Ripper news, in the process revealing much about the social, political, and sexual anxieties of late Victorian Britain and the role of journalists in reinforcing social norms. L. Perry Curtis surveys the mass newspaper culture of the era, delving into the nature of sensationalism and the conventions of domestic murder news. Analyzing the fifteen newspapers - several of which emanated from the East End, where the murders took place - he shows how journalists played on the fears of readers about law and order by dwelling on lethal violence rather than sex, offering gruesome details about knife injuries but often withholding some of the more intimate details of the pelvic mutilations. He also considers how the Ripper news affected public perceptions of social conditions in Whitechapel. 'It is a major contribution to cultural history', Christopher Frayling, Rector of the Royal College of Art, London 'An excellent book that offers a new angle on an always fascinating subject', John Davis, Queen's College, Oxford L. Perry Curtis, Jr., is professor of history and modern culture and media at Brown University, Rhode Island.

Lofortovo prison, built by Catherine the Great, was reputed to have niches in the walls of an underground hallway where executioners with silenced pistols concealed themselves before emerging to shoot in the back of the head an enemy of the state being walked along the corridor. Persistent rumors told of beatings and tortures at Lofortovo, but I kept repeating to myself: This is the new Russia, not the old Soviet state. The men taking me in have been pleasant, even courteous. No threats. No raised voices. "Just a few questions and you'll be on your way again."

Another eight-by-fifteen room. Three steel tablets meant as beds. One sink, one toilet, one small mirror embedded into the concrete, no bars, one opaque window. It was cold in the cell—not freezing, but 45 degrees Fahrenheit, kept at that temperature to make me miserable. I paced for a while. Nervous. Upset. Confused. Unable to sleep. Everything in the world went through my mind: I will get out of here, I won't get out of here, best-case scenario, worst-case scenario...

I lay down on the mattress, under the blanket, and was so cold that I had to put on my sport coat to keep from shivering. It was dim but not dark, as there was a light on in my cell that never went out. Every few minutes the quality of light coming from outside the opaque glass would change, and I guessed that the guards were checking in on me, making sure I hadn't tried to commit suicide or send a message from the Flash Gordon transmitter concealed in my wedding ring....
There was no sleep that night.
—from TORPEDOED

He was an innocent man: Edmond Pope—former Naval Intelligence officer, then private businessman, in Russia looking for some answers. Little did he know that he was looking in some very dangerous places.

There was the top-secret operation: Western military and intelligence agencies out to steal one of Russia's crown jewels—the plans to a submarine torpedo that traveled an astonishing 300 miles per hour.

There was the new man in charge: Vladimir Putin—former head of the KGB, now boss of all Russia and a man who wanted to set an example at almost any cost.

It would all come together, and the result would be an incredible story of duplicity, secrets, and lies. Now, for the first time ever, Edmond Pope tells the real story of what led to his becoming the first American since Francis Gary Powers to be convicted of espionage in Russia. Combining a gripping account of his arrest, trial, and 253-day imprisonment with a deeply disturbing look at today's Russia—where you can trust no one, and everything is for sale—his book reads like a John Le Carré novel come to life. And with a large dollop of espionage—insider information and secret submarine warfare technology, Pope's enthralling memoir will also remind readers of the best of Tom Clancy or Blind Man's Bluff.

Torpedoed reveals that the new Russia isn't that different from the old, that a fresh Cold War is brewing, and that Americans in Russia are at risk. With vivid portraits of Russians devoted to framing an American and Americans devoted to justice—Pope's wife Cheri first and foremost among them— it moves from dank Moscow prison cells to the White House to the inner rooms of the Kremlin. And like the secret torpedo in question, Edmond Pope's harrowing story races to a conclusion of devastating impact.

The men and women of Appalachia are strong and self-sufficient. In Roane County, Tennessee they most often have lived on and between the foothills of the Great Smokey Mountains. Times changed and as they did in this story, those who had become clearly isolated in their long-standing culture took change personally. They didn't like it. Leon and Rocky Houston are two such men, along with a large group of sympathetic followers. In the end that sympathy portrayed years of self-styled, anti-government lawsuits as well as the death of a sheriff's deputy and his retired, disabled ride-along officer. To believe the fifteen to twenty years of this rising storm ended in death for two men patrolling the public road "reserved" for the Houston clan came only as somewhat of a surprise. To believe that the storm clouds descended due to a school zone traffic violation five years before the killin's was at first a mystery. But a deep look at Rocky's 2001 courtroom "ticket tantrum" unveiled much more: Then and there he reportedly threw himself on the floor while yelling, "if you remember Waco you haven't seen anything yet." The comment's starkness unwinds within the book to explore the "sovereign citizens and militia mania" of the 90's and where that might have taken the brothers Houstons' thinking and need to kill "a few cops."

A victim of violent abuse at the hands of his stepfather, Lenny spent much of his teenage life in borstal as he began to follow a life of crime. However, it was his ability as a fighter that was to turn his life around. Lenny McLean inspired fear in many, but respect from all, as he became a bare-knuckle fighting legend. His fame became even greater in later life, appearing in Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels just as his autobiography was reaching the top of the bestsellers chart. Lenny's untimely death from cancer in 1998 marked the beginning of the end of the old Cockney way of life and interest in his story has only increased since his passing, inspiring documentaries as well as a feature film, My Name is Lenny. In these unedited conversations between Lenny and his 'book man' Peter Gerrard, featuring many anecdotes that did not appear in The Guv'nor, we get to see the man behind the public image. As he looks back on his life, these transcripts reveal Lenny's humour and charm as well as the volatility that made him one of the most notorious figures ever to emerge from the East End.