From its inception, America has been an unusually violent nation. In this compelling book, Elliott J. Gorn tells stories that help illuminate violence in America, how we think about it, how it changes over time, and what it means. A series of portraits in blood - eye gouging matches on the Southern frontier, the murder of the street tough Butcher Bill Poole, the rise of the crime-and-sex scandal sheet, The National Police Gazette, John Dillinger's bank robbing rampage through the Great Depression, the horrific lynching of the young Chicagoan Emmett Till, and the resurrection of his memory during the Black Lives Matter movement -Violent Men demonstrates how racism, gender, and class coalesce to paint a vivid but disturbing picture of our history.
Elliott J. Gorn is the Joseph A. Gagliano Chair in American Urban History at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author and editor of multiple books on urban and American culture, including 'Dillinger's Wild Ride: The Year That Made America's Public Enemy Number One (2009)' and 'Let the People See: The Story of Emmett Till (2018).'
Introduction; 1. 'Gouge and bite, pull hair and scratch': the social significance of fighting in the Southern backcountry; 2.'Good-bye boys, I die a true American': homicide, nativism, and working-class culture in Antebellum America; 3. 'Love, shame and blood': the National Police Gazette and the culture of spectacle; 4. The Manassa Mauler and the fighting marine: an interpretation of the Dempsey–Tunney fights; 5. Re-membering John Dillinger; 6. 'No quarrel with them Vietcong': Muhammad Ali's Cold War; 7. The lynching of Emmett Till revisited; Afterword.
From its inception, America has been an unusually violent nation. In this compelling book, Elliott J. Gorn tells stories that help illuminate violence in America, how we think about it, how it changes over time, and what it means. A series of portraits in blood - eye gouging matches on the Southern frontier, the murder of the street tough Butcher Bill Poole, the rise of the crime-and-sex scandal sheet, The National Police Gazette, John Dillinger's bank robbing rampage through the Great Depression, the horrific lynching of the young Chicagoan Emmett Till, and the resurrection of his memory during the Black Lives Matter movement -Violent Men demonstrates how racism, gender, and class coalesce to paint a vivid but disturbing picture of our history.
Elliott J. Gorn is the Joseph A. Gagliano Chair in American Urban History at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author and editor of multiple books on urban and American culture, including 'Dillinger's Wild Ride: The Year That Made America's Public Enemy Number One (2009)' and 'Let the People See: The Story of Emmett Till (2018).'
Introduction; 1. 'Gouge and bite, pull hair and scratch': the social significance of fighting in the Southern backcountry; 2.'Good-bye boys, I die a true American': homicide, nativism, and working-class culture in Antebellum America; 3. 'Love, shame and blood': the National Police Gazette and the culture of spectacle; 4. The Manassa Mauler and the fighting marine: an interpretation of the Dempsey–Tunney fights; 5. Re-membering John Dillinger; 6. 'No quarrel with them Vietcong': Muhammad Ali's Cold War; 7. The lynching of Emmett Till revisited; Afterword.
From its inception, America has been an unusually violent nation. In this compelling book, Elliott J. Gorn tells stories that help illuminate violence in America, how we think about it, how it changes over time, and what it means. A series of portraits in blood - eye gouging matches on the Southern frontier, the murder of the street tough Butcher Bill Poole, the rise of the crime-and-sex scandal sheet, The National Police Gazette, John Dillinger's bank robbing rampage through the Great Depression, the horrific lynching of the young Chicagoan Emmett Till, and the resurrection of his memory during the Black Lives Matter movement -Violent Men demonstrates how racism, gender, and class coalesce to paint a vivid but disturbing picture of our history.
Elliott J. Gorn is the Joseph A. Gagliano Chair in American Urban History at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author and editor of multiple books on urban and American culture, including 'Dillinger's Wild Ride: The Year That Made America's Public Enemy Number One (2009)' and 'Let the People See: The Story of Emmett Till (2018).'
Introduction; 1. 'Gouge and bite, pull hair and scratch': the social significance of fighting in the Southern backcountry; 2.'Good-bye boys, I die a true American': homicide, nativism, and working-class culture in Antebellum America; 3. 'Love, shame and blood': the National Police Gazette and the culture of spectacle; 4. The Manassa Mauler and the fighting marine: an interpretation of the Dempsey–Tunney fights; 5. Re-membering John Dillinger; 6. 'No quarrel with them Vietcong': Muhammad Ali's Cold War; 7. The lynching of Emmett Till revisited; Afterword.