As Chiasson and his contributors illustrate, trials are media
events that can have long-reaching significance. They can, and
have, changed the way people think, how institutions function, and
have shaped public opinions. While this collection on ten trials is
about withcraft, slavery, religion, and radicalism, it is, in many
ways, the story of America. Trials are the stuff of news. Those
rare moments when justice, or a reasonable facsimile, is meted out.
And what offers up more high drama, or melodrama, than a highly
publicized trial? Most news events enjoy short life spans. They
happen; they are reported; they are quickly forgotten. As Chiasson
and his contributors make clear, a trial often is a lingering,
living thing that builds in tension. It is, every once in a long
while, a modern Shakespearean drama with a twist: The audience
becomes members of the cast because, every once in a long while,
society finds itself the defendant. Trials can have lasting
importance beyond how the public perceives them. A trial can have
long-reaching significance if it changes the way people think, or
how institutions function, or shapes public opinion. Ten such
American trials covering a span of 307 years are covered here. In
each, the sociological underpinnings of events often has greater
significance than either the crime or the trial. The ten trials
included are the Salem witch trials, the Amistad trial, the Sioux
Indian Uprising trials, the Ed Johnson/Sheriff Shipp trial, the Big
Bill Haywood trial, the Ossian Sweet trial, the Clay Shaw trial,
the Manuel Noriega trial, and the Matthew Shepard trial. While the
book is about ten crimes, the subsequent trials, and the media
coverage of each, it is also a book about witchcraft, about
religion, slavery, and radicalism. It paints portraits of a racist
America, a capitalistic America, an anarchist America. It relates
compelling tales of compassion, greed, stupidity, and hate
beginning in 17th-century colonial times and ending in present-day
America. In many ways, it is the story of America.
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