Examining the role of violence in America's past, this collection of essays explores its history and development from slave patrols in the colonial South to gun ownership in the 20th century. The contributors focus not only on individual acts such as domestic violence, murder, duelling, frontier vigilantism and rape, but also on group and state-led acts such as lynchings, slave uprisings, the establishment of rifle clubs, legal sanctions of heterosexual aggression, and invasive medical experiments on women's bodies.

Lethal Violence: A Sourcebook on Fatal Domestic, Acquaintance and Stranger Aggression applies the lethal violence sequence analysis to a wide-ranging array of fatal aggression, resulting in a multitude of observations and principles of violence. This sourcebook provides base rate information and cases for each type of fatal interaction, then applies the knowledge to violence-related situations and settings.

In this illuminating and evocative exploration of the origin and function of storytelling, the author goes beyond the work of mythologist Joseph Campbell, arguing that mythmaking evolved as a cultural survival strategy for coping with the constant fear of being killed and eaten by predators. Beginning nearly two million years ago in the Pleistocene era, the first stories, Trout argues, functioned as alarm calls, warning fellow group members about the carnivores lurking in the surroundings. At the earliest period, before the development of language, these rudimentary "stories" would have been acted out. When language appeared with the evolution of the ancestral human brain, stories were recited, memorized, and much later written down as the often bone-chilling myths that have survived to this day. This book takes the reader through the landscape of world mythology to show how our more recent ancestors created myths that portrayed animal predators in four basic ways: as monsters, as gods, as benefactors, and as role models. Each incarnation is a variation of the fear-management technique that enabled early humans not only to survive but to overcome their potentially incapacitating fear of predators. In the final chapter, Trout explores the ways in which our visceral fear of predators is played out in the movies, where both animal and human predators serve to probe and revitalize our capacity to detect and survive danger. Anyone with an interest in mythology, archaeology, folk tales, and the origins of contemporary storytelling will find this book an exciting and provocative exploration into the natural and psychological forces that shaped human culture and gave rise to storytelling and mythmaking.

Frederick Garber studies in a wide range of English, French, German, and American literary texts instances of the struggle for the self's autonomy during the period preceding modernism. In tracing a pattern that changes from the unsettling of bourgeois conditions in Richardson to the collapse of that challenge in the Decadents, he demonstrates that this period is characterized by a pervasive dialectic of aloofness and association. Originally published in 1982. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Sacred Violence in Early America offers a sweeping reinterpretation of the violence endemic to seventeenth-century English colonization by reexamining some of the key moments of cultural and religious encounter in North America. Susan Juster explores different forms of sacred violence—blood sacrifice, holy war, malediction, and iconoclasm—to uncover how European traditions of ritual violence developed during the wars of the Reformation were introduced and ultimately transformed in the New World. Juster's central argument concerns the rethinking of the relationship between the material and the spiritual worlds that began with the Reformation and reached perhaps its fullest expression on the margins of empire. The Reformation transformed the Christian landscape from an environment rich in sounds, smells, images, and tactile encounters, both divine and human, to an austere space of scriptural contemplation and prayer. When English colonists encountered the gods and rituals of the New World, they were forced to confront the unresolved tensions between the material and spiritual within their own religious practice. Accounts of native cannibalism, for instance, prompted uneasy comparisons with the ongoing debate among Reformers about whether Christ was bodily present in the communion wafer. Sacred Violence in Early America reveals the Old World antecedents of the burning of native bodies and texts during the seventeenth-century wars of extermination, the prosecution of heretics and blasphemers in colonial courts, and the destruction of chapels and mission towns up and down the North American seaboard. At the heart of the book is an analysis of "theologies of violence" that gave conceptual and emotional shape to English colonists' efforts to construct a New World sanctuary in the face of enemies both familiar and strange: blood sacrifice, sacramentalism, legal and philosophical notions of just and holy war, malediction, the contest between "living" and "dead" images in Christian idology, and iconoclasm.

"The organization of the reader′s guide—especially the groupings of landmark cases, race riots, and criminology theories—is impressive ... Other related titles lack the breadth, detail, and accessibility of this work ... Recommended for all libraries; essential for comprehensive social studies collections." —Library Journal As seen almost daily on local and national news, race historically and presently figures prominently in crime and justice reporting within the United States, in the areas of hate crimes, racial profiling, sentencing disparities, wrongful convictions, felon disenfranchisement, political prisoners, juveniles and the death penalty, and culturally specific delinquency prevention programs. The Encyclopedia of Race and Crime covers issues in both historical and contemporary context, with information on race and ethnicity and their impact on crime and the administration of justice. These two volumes offer a greater appreciation for the similar historical experiences of varied racial and ethnic groups and illustrate how race and ethnicity has mattered and continues to matter in the administration of American criminal justice. Key Features Covers a number of broad thematic areas: basic concepts and theories of criminal justice; the police, courts, and corrections; juvenile justice; public policy; the media; organizations; specific groups and populations; and specific cases and biographies Addresses such topics as gender, hate/bias crimes, immigrant experiences, international and cross-cultural issues, race and gangs, and race and law, Presents experiences of all major racial and ethnic groups in the U.S., including Asians, Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, and Ethnic Whites, as well as religious minorities, such as Muslims Includes coverage of recent incidents like the alleged rape of a black female North Carolina Central University student by white male members of the Duke University Lacrosse Team;, the Jena 6 incident; the Tulia, Texas drug arrests; the Rodney King beating; the O. J. Simpson trials in the 1990s; and more recent racial profiling incidents Two appendices provide information on locating and interpreting statistical data on race and crime, as well as detailed instructions on how to access statistical data on the web for such specific areas as arrests, drugs, gang membership, hate crimes, homicide trends, juvenile justice, prison populations, racial profiling, the death penalty, and victimization Because the topic of race and crime is of wide interest and relevance, entries in this Encyclopedia are written in an accessible style to appeal to a broad audience, making it a welcome addition to academic and public libraries alike.

The September 11th attacks in 2001 and the subsequent 'War on Terror' have had a profound effect on American cinema, and the contemporary Western is no exception. In this book, John White explores how films such as Open Range, True Grit and Jane Got a Gun reinforce a conservative myth of America exceptionalism; endorsing the use of extreme force in dealing with enemies and highlighting the importance of defending the homeland. Placing their characters within a dark world of confusion and horror, these films reflect the United States' post-9/11 uncertainties, and the conflict between civilised values and the brutality employed to defend them.