The Most Controversial Cases of the Early 20th Century: The Murder of Stanford White, Sacco & Vanzetti, Leopold & Loeb, and the Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping

Name: The Most Controversial Cases of the Early 20th Century: The Murder of Stanford White, Sacco & Vanzetti, Leopold & Loeb, and the Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping
Brand: Charles River Editors
SKU: 41393294377130
Price: 12.99 USD
Availability: InStock

By: Charles River Editors

ISBN: 9781537335650

$12.99

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Description

*Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the crimes and trials *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading It reads like a modern day Lifetime movie: two talented, popular and wealthy men both fall in love with the same beautiful but somewhat tarnished girl. One had a long history of mental illness, the other was considered an architectural genius. The inevitable showdown, complete with a very public murder, took place in one of the most fashionable restaurants in the world. Although it reads like a movie or soap opera, it was an all too true story that culminated with the 1907 “trial of the century,” when railroad tycoon Harry Thaw, the husband of famous model Evelyn Nesbit, was prosecuted for killing renowned architect Stanford White, his wife’s former lover. Some say that it was such a shocking event that it actually helped speed the end of the Gilded Age. There are few cases in American history as well known as Sacco and Vanzetti, and perhaps none of them were as controversial or socially charged as the trials against the two Italian immigrants in the early 20th century. The two avowed anarchists were ultimately tried and executed for murder and armed robbery, but the case said as much about the society trying them as it did about their guilt or innocence. Over 90 years later, there is still a heated debate over whether the two men, who arduously asserted their innocence, were actually guilty, but what is clear is that many Americans at the time believed they were being unjustly accused based on anti-Italian prejudice and disdain for their political beliefs. There has been no shortage of shocking crimes and trials that generated frenzied coverage across America, but few can lay claim to “crime of the century” like the murder carried out by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb in 1924. While studying as young adults at the prestigious University of Chicago, Leopold and Loeb devised a meticulous plot to kidnap and murder a child while managing to get away with ransom money, thereby perpetrating what they considered a “perfect crime

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