Prison Courtyard, by Vincent van Gogh, 1890. The Pushkin Museum of Fine Art, Moscow, Russia.

Prison Courtyard, by Vincent van Gogh, 1890. The Pushkin Museum of Fine Art, Moscow, Russia.

Crimes & Punishments

Volume II, Number 2 | spring 2009

Purchase

Soldiers and police establishing line at door of the Morgan Bank after anti-capitalist Wall Street bombing, September 16, 1920.

Preamble

Crime Scenes

By Lewis H. Lapham

The American fondness for the dressing up of crime in the costumes of romance is an amusement priced at too high a cost.

More

Film noir title screens.

Murder in Black & White

By Nathaniel Rich

A history of film noir, America’s cinematic take on life on the bottom.

More

Map

Spider Men

The world’s most-wanted criminals.

View

c. 228 | Naukratis

Something Is Rotten in the Agora

Athenaeus prefers a fish out of water.More

1888 | London

Red Ink

Jack the Ripper taunts the public. More

1597 | London

Enemy of the State

Drawing a confession. More

Charts & Graphs

Medieval Torture

Horrible punishments from the Dark Ages.

View

American literary critic and novelist Elizabeth Hardwick.

Black and white photograph of Mencken looking over his shoulder at the camera

Two crimes undid me: a poem and a mistake.

—Ovid, 10

Black and white photograph of Friedrich Nietzsche with a huge mustache.

American lawyer Clarence Darrow.

Friedrich Nietzsche & Clarence Darrow

Purchase