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

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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.

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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.

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Map

Spider Men

The world’s most-wanted criminals.

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1797 | Mediterranean Sea

Forestalling a Mutiny

Herman Melville among the pirates. More

632 | Arabia

The Hour of Doom

Judgement day. More

c. 1650 | Boston

Withholding Redemption

Sinners in the hands of Nathaniel Hawthorne. More

Charts & Graphs

Thou Shalt Not…

Laws on the books in the United States.

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Sculpture bust of Greek historian Herodotus.

Painting of Thomas Hobbes

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

Black and white photograph of African-American leader Malcolm X.

Woman with short gray hair seated with a book open in her lap

Portrait of English essayist and critic Thomas De Quincey.

Black and white photograph of Italian writer and chemist Primo Levi.

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

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