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The Murder of the Century
- The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City & Sparked the Tabloid Wars
- Narrated by: William Dufris
- Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins
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Editorial reviews
Paul Collins tells the story of the brutal, bloody murder of William Guldensuppe committed by his girlfriend and her lover. Narrator William Dufris gives a delightfully varied and nuanced performance. The book features the voices of a diverse cast of late-19th century New York characters, from Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst to a duck farmer in Woodside to employees of the Murray Hill bathhouse. Together, the characters tell the story of a gruesome crime that fueled a sensationalistic media juggernaut from the moment a group of young boys found a man's mutilated torso floating in the East River in New York City on a summer day in 1897. In Dufris' inventive performance, he expertly adopts the voice of the chillingly blasé murderers; then turns on a dime to describe, in a voice filled with wonder, the new forensic science that went into identifying the body. Dufris engages the listener by sounding as fascinated by the story as the author himself is.
It is vital that Dufris get the performances just right, since Collins has distinguished his book from other histories of the crime by telling the story of the investigation and trial largely through the voices of the people who were actually there. Collins carefully reconstructs their quotes into an intensely detailed narrative, and Dufris individualizes the voice of each witness, including the murder defendants themselves. Especially effective is his portrayal of one of the main defense attorneys in the story, William Howe, whom Dufris imbues with a bold, brash voice that enlivens the "Big Bill" persona that Collins describes. But Dufris is just as adept at capturing the macabre character of the women who, obsessed with the case, filled the sweltering courtroom gallery day after day to show their support for the dashing murder defendant, Martin Thorn. Maggie Frank
Publisher's summary
In Long Island, a farmer found a duck pond turned red with blood. On the Lower East Side, two boys playing at a pier discovered a floating human torso wrapped tightly in oilcloth. Blueberry pickers near Harlem stumbled upon neatly severed limbs in an overgrown ditch. Clues to a horrifying crime were turning up all over New York, but the police were baffled: There were no witnesses, no motives, no suspects.
The grisly finds that began on the afternoon of June 26, 1897, plunged detectives headlong into the era's most perplexing murder. Seized upon by battling media moguls Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, the case became a publicity circus. Re-creations of the murder were staged in Times Square, armed reporters lurked in the streets of Hell's Kitchen in pursuit of suspects, and an unlikely trio - an anxious cop, a cub reporter, and an eccentric professor - all raced to solve the crime. What emerged was a sensational love triangle and an even more sensational trial: an unprecedented capital case hinging on circumstantial evidence around a victim that the police couldn't identify with certainty - and that the defense claimed wasn't even dead.
The Murder of the Century is a rollicking tale - a rich evocation of America during the Gilded Age and a colorful re-creation of the tabloid wars that have dominated media to this day.
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- By: Michael Cannell
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Long before the specter of terrorism haunted the public imagination, a serial bomber stalked the streets of 1950s New York. The race to catch him would give birth to a new science called criminal profiling. Grand Central, Penn Station, Radio City Music Hall - for almost two decades, no place was safe from the man who signed his anonymous letters "FP" and left his lethal devices in phone booths, storage lockers, even tucked into the plush seats of movie theaters.
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16 Years NYC Held Hostage
- By in1ear (John Row) on 04-27-17
By: Michael Cannell
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A Bright and Guilty Place
- Murder, Corruption, and L.A.'s Scandalous Coming of Age
- By: Richard Rayner
- Narrated by: Brett Barry
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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In A Bright and Guilty Place, an exhilarating tale of murder in L.A., Richard Rayner finds the source of the city's darkness in real-life events that unfolded in the 1920s, when the booming early years of L.A. started to shade into the Depression, and the city of sunshine revealed the hidden darkness and corruption at its heart.
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Didn't hold my interest
- By Hopesurvives on 11-03-17
By: Richard Rayner
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Sin in the Second City
- Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul
- By: Karen Abbott
- Narrated by: Joyce Bean
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Karen Abbott's colorful, nuanced portrait of the iconic Everleigh sisters; their world-famous brothel, the Everleigh Club; and the perennial clash between our nation's hedonistic impulses and Puritanical roots culminates in a dramatic last stand between brothel keepers and crusading reformers. Sin in the Second City offers a vivid snapshot of America's journey from Victorian-era propriety to 20th-century modernity.
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Great book - brilliant narrator!
- By Z. Halley on 04-17-10
By: Karen Abbott
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Satan's Circus
- Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York's Trial of the Century
- By: Mike Dash
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 12 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
They called it Satan's Circus, a square mile of Midtown Manhattan where vice ruled, sin flourished, and depravity danced in every doorway. At the turn of the 20th century, murder was so common in the vice district that few people were surprised when the loudmouthed owner of a shabby casino was gunned down on the steps of its best hotel.
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New York, N.Y
- By Robert on 07-11-07
By: Mike Dash
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A Death in Belmont
- By: Sebastian Junger
- Narrated by: Kevin Conway
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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In 1963, with the city of Boston already terrified by a series of savage crimes known as the Boston Stranglings, a murder occurred in Belmont, just a few blocks from the house of Sebastian Junger's family, a murder that seemed to fit exactly the pattern of the Strangler. Roy Smith, a black man who had cleaned the victim's house that day, was convicted, but the terror of the Strangler continued.
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Excellent
- By Susanna on 01-13-15
By: Sebastian Junger
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Tinseltown
- Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood
- By: William J. Mann
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 15 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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By 1920, the movies had suddenly become America's new favorite pastime and one of the nation's largest industries. Never before had a medium possessed such power to influence; yet Hollywood's glittering ascendancy was threatened by a string of headline-grabbing tragedies - including the murder of William Desmond Taylor, the popular president of the Motion Picture Directors Association, a legendary crime that has remained unsolved until now.
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Everybody's a dreamer...
- By Steven on 01-08-15
By: William J. Mann
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Pietr the Latvian
- Inspector Maigret, Book 1
- By: Georges Simenon, David Bellos - translator
- Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong
- Length: 3 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The first audiobook which appeared in Georges Simenon's famous Maigret series, in a gripping new translation by David Bellos.Inevitably Maigret was a hostile presence in the Majestic. He constituted a kind of foreign body that the hotel's atmosphere could not assimilate. Not that he looked like a cartoon policeman. He didn't have a moustache and he didn't wear heavy boots. His clothes were well cut and made of fairly light worsted. He shaved every day and looked after his hands. But his frame was proletarian. He was a big, bony man.
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Long live Maigret
- By Adeliese Baumann on 11-19-14
By: Georges Simenon, and others
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The Wicked Boy
- The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer
- By: Kate Summerscale
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Early in the morning of Monday, July 8, 1895, 13-year-old Robert Coombes and his 12-year-old brother, Nattie, set out from their small, yellow-brick terraced house in East London to watch a cricket match at Lord's. Their father had gone to sea the previous Friday, the boys told their neighbors, and their mother was visiting her family in Liverpool. Over the next 10 days, Robert and Nattie spent extravagantly, pawning their parents' valuables to fund trips to the theatre and the seaside. But as the sun beat down on the Coombes house, a strange smell began to emanate.
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Amazing True Story
- By Lisa Belle on 01-08-17
By: Kate Summerscale
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American Lightning
- Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century
- By: Howard Blum
- Narrated by: John H. Mayer
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
It was an explosion that reverberated across the country—and into the very heart of early-twentieth-century America. On the morning of October 1, 1910, the walls of the Los Angeles Times Building buckled as a thunderous detonation sent men, machinery, and mortar rocketing into the night air. When at last the wreckage had been sifted and the hospital triage units consulted, twenty-one people were declared dead and dozens more injured. But as it turned out, this was just a prelude to the devastation that was to come.
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very interesting popular history
- By D. Littman on 11-28-08
By: Howard Blum
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The Mark Inside
- A Perfect Swindle, a Cunning Revenge, and a Small History of the Big Con
- By: Amy Reading
- Narrated by: Richard McGonagle
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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In 1919, Texas rancher J. Frank Norfleet lost everything he had in a stock market swindle. He did what many other marks did - he went home, borrowed more money from his family, and returned for another round of swindling. Only after he lost that second fortune did he reclaim control of his story. Instead of crawling back home in shame, he vowed to hunt down the five men who had conned him. Through Norfleet's ingenious reverse-swindle, Amy Reading reveals the mechanics behind the scenes of the big con.
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Confusing Premise Makes for A Tough Read
- By Grumpy S. Monkey on 06-19-12
By: Amy Reading
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Death in the Air
- The True Story of a Serial Killer, the Great London Smog, and the Strangling of a City
- By: Kate Winkler Dawson
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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A real-life thriller in the vein of The Devil in the White City, Kate Winkler Dawson's debut, Death in the Air, is a gripping, historical narrative of a serial killer, an environmental disaster, and an iconic city struggling to regain its footing. In winter 1952, London automobiles and thousands of coal-burning hearths belched particulate matter into the air. But the smog that descended on December fifth of 1952 was different; it was a type that held the city hostage for five long days.
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Interesting
- By irene on 11-27-17
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Hellhound on His Trail
- The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin
- By: Hampton Sides
- Narrated by: Hampton Sides
- Length: 15 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
On April 23, 1967, Prisoner #416J, an inmate at the notorious Missouri State Penitentiary, escaped in a breadbox. Fashioning himself Eric Galt, this nondescript thief and con man - whose real name was James Earl Ray -drifted through the South, into Mexico, and then Los Angeles, where he was galvanized by George Wallace's racist presidential campaign. With relentless storytelling drive, Sides follows Galt and King as they crisscross the country, one stalking the other, until the crushing moment at the Lorraine Motel.
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History Comes Alive
- By L. Lyter on 06-29-10
By: Hampton Sides
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The First Family
- Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder, and the Birth of the American Mafia
- By: Mike Dash
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Before the Five Families who so notoriously dominated U.S. organized crime for a bloody half-century, there was the one-fingered, surpassingly cunning Giuseppe Morello and his murderous coterie of brothers. Born into a life of poverty in rural Sicily, Morello became an American nightmare, pioneering the bizarre initiation rituals, imaginative protection rackets, influential underworld reigns, and Mafia wars later popularized by countless books, television shows, and movies.
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The truth about the origins of the American mafia
- By J. Sovar on 01-09-13
By: Mike Dash
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The Great Pearl Heist
- London's Greatest Thief and Scotland Yard's Hunt for the World's Most Valuable Necklace
- By: Molly Caldwell Crosby
- Narrated by: Michael Page
- Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the summer of 1913, under the cover of London’s perpetual smoggy dusk, two brilliant minds are pitted against each other - a celebrated gentleman thief and a talented Scotland Yard detective - in the greatest jewel heist of the new century. An exquisite strand of pale pink pearls, worth more than the Hope Diamond, has been bought by a Hatton Garden broker. Word of the “Mona Lisa of Pearls” spreads around the world, captivating jewelers as well as thieves.
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Entertaining Read
- By Rodney on 12-18-12
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From a modern perspective, it may seem that the United States was a major powerhouse since its early days. However, the truth is far from it. This transformation from a weak and relatively poor dominion into a world-class international power was undoubtedly a long process, yet it achieved its peak in the late 19th century. At that time, the US managed to achieve change in many aspects, from economic and social to political and military. This period of growth has become known as the Gilded Age.
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Excellent concise history
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I did not want this to end ...
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The names of notorious serial killers are usually well-known; they echo in the news and in public consciousness. But most people have never heard of Israel Keyes, one of the most ambitious and terrifying serial killers in modern history American Predator is the ambitious culmination of years of interviews with key figures in law enforcement and in Keyes's life, and research uncovered from classified FBI files. Callahan takes us on a journey into the chilling, nightmarish mind of a relentless killer, and to the limitations of traditional law enforcement.
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Orphaned at a young age, Edith Stuyvesant Dresser claimed lineage from one of New York's best known families. She grew up in Newport and Paris, and her engagement and marriage to George Vanderbilt was one of the most watched events of Gilded Age society. But none of this prepared her to be mistress of Biltmore House. Before their marriage, the wealthy and bookish Vanderbilt had dedicated his life to creating a spectacular European-style estate on 125,000 acres of North Carolina wilderness.
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Astor
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What listeners say about The Murder of the Century
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- deborah
- 11-04-11
Great look at NYC crime, forensics, and journalism
This is a well narrated audiobook of murder, forensics, and the incredible power and resources of yellow journalism in NYC at the turn of the 20th century. Pulitzer and Hearst battle to scoop each other in a grisly murder of a mutilated German-American. Forensic and courtroom procedures are described in stark contrast to today's format. The story swirls around collusion between the police and reporters, the handling of evidence, the subject of abortion, the conditions of the Tombs jail, the consolidation of the five boroughs into one municipality, and the apex of yellow journalism where news is made, not reported. Great story, especially if you're from NYC.
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34 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Anthony
- 07-07-11
Well worth the credit!
A very "listenable" book, factual, but well presented, interesting and captivating. A fascinating history of a short period in journalism - perfectly read!
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32 people found this helpful
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Overall
- loix
- 06-26-11
Perfect summer read and possibly more
Details really bring the era to life without slowing the pace and pitch of the story, which unfolds like a police procedural and courtroom drama among other things. The author does not preach against sensationalism, but instead wisely shows us that even more than a century later, some have never managed to evolve (the brouhaha surrounding high-profile cases). Competent narration rounds out this perfect package.
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32 people found this helpful
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- Renee
- 11-28-11
Fantastic!
I could listen to this story more than once, first for fast paced and interesting story and then the wonderful narrative reading. The story does get bit a graphic on the details of the murder but what would you expect, it's about a murder. The story never slows up and you are placed into that time period with fluidity of the story's timeline. I loved learning about the history of the papers and really enjoyed the writer including the epilogue. I will go out and buy the book to see if I missed anything. I love a book that makes you want to do more research on the time period because it opens your eyes to a different time.
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29 people found this helpful
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Loved it
Didn't know what to expect. I had been looking for a book to spark my interest in audio again, and this was it. Very tight writing. Intriguing story intermingled with a background of newspaper rivalries. Narration was perfect.
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22 people found this helpful
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- Kevin
- 03-15-12
Very Interesting
If you could sum up The Murder of the Century in three words, what would they be?
Interesting, knowledgable, thorough
Who was your favorite character and why?
Defense council was portrayed very well by the narrator
What does William Dufris bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
He had a great way of distinguishing each character's voice and brought out emotion in the dialogue. William Dufris did a great job!
If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?
The package no one wants to open
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15 people found this helpful
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- David
- 02-12-14
Focus on a time and place
The real focus of this book is New York City at the turn of the 20th century. A ghastly crime and the ensuing investigation, trial and denouement serve as the occasion for the narrative, but the book uses these central events to immerse the reader in a very wide ranging evocation of the time and place. As melodramatic as many of the events and details may be, in the end this is a piece of well researched cultural history which gives one the sense of being set down in the middle of the chaos, the sights, the sounds, the smells and the swirling energy at the vortex of American turn-of-the-century dynamism.
This New York has spawned a gaggle of newspapers engaged in a cutthroat struggle for survival. It is a rich, bubbling brew of newly arrived European immigrants finding their place in a brash society which has just gotten a grip on its confidence and is changing at the speed of avaricious inspiration. It is a time when trial reports are transmitted to anxious newsrooms by both telephone and carrier pigeon. Scientific "experts" are finding their way onto witness stands, and American jurisprudence is celebrating its first superstar criminal attorneys. In short, this is an extremely interesting city!
If you are looking for a gripping true crime investigation, penetrating character studies or a probing examination of the newspaper wars, you will be somewhat disappointed. If you would be delighted to be delivered by time-machine to a fascinating city where a diver in a newfangled helmet is searching the bottom of the river for a severed head and where the grisly aspects of the recently introduced and quite inefficient electric chair are being hotly debated, this may be your cup of tea.
I found William Dufris' narration to be a bit labored and overwrought, perhaps in keeping with the lurid nature of some of the content. Still I would recommend the book to anyone who will enjoy a colorful and detailed glimpse of a moment in history.
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14 people found this helpful
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- Kristi R.
- 04-13-12
War of the Newspapers!
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Definitely! It was a great listen. New York City in the age of Tammany Hall and Pulitzer vs. Hearst duking it out in their tabloids. What's not to like?
What other book might you compare The Murder of the Century to and why?
Compulsion by Ira Levin, which was a novel about the Leopold/ Loeb murderers. This story is true though, and much more compelling because it is factual.
Which scene was your favorite?
The scene I remember the most is when Augusta returns to the prison and asks for a job. I think she missed the attention she got as a high profile prisoner.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
I enjoyed the book immensely but would never sit for 10 hours to finish any book...
Any additional comments?
This is a wonderfully written and narrated story about a real life murder in 1897 New York City. The most important thing about the narrative is the early police force, (fingerprints were not reliable at that time) and how the newsmen and women were just as likely to gather the clues as the cops. It was an important step in beginning a cohesive way to solve crimes and a lot of the people involved learned a great deal from being involved in this case.
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14 people found this helpful
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- BVerité
- 07-01-13
Thoroughly entertaining history!!
Excellent! An insane murder mystery and a journalistic dogfight between William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. The beginnings of the aggressive news media we all know today...
More fun than I expected!!
Incredibly well written, and well performed.
Easily worth the credit. Solid 5stars.
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11 people found this helpful
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- Neal
- 01-21-12
Great Crime Story
What did you love best about The Murder of the Century?
Being a history buff I was fascinated to listen to a story about how life was back at the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th. I really enjoyed learning about how police work, and court proceedings how they differ (and for that matter how they led to today's forensic evidence handling) today.
What was one of the most memorable moments of The Murder of the Century?
The description of the execution proceeding and it's aftermath.
Which scene was your favorite?
The description of the trial proceeding and how well it was arranged and conducted.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
No, but it was fascinating.
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