By Daniel Feierstein

Genocide not only annihilates people but also destroys and reorganizes social relations, using terror as a method. In Genocide as Social Practice, Argentinean social scientist Daniel Feierstein looks at the policies of state-sponsored repression pursued by the Argentine military dictatorship against political opponents between 1976 and 1983 and those pursued by the Third Reich between 1933 and 1945. He finds similarities, not in the extent of the horror but in terms of the goals of the perpetrators.

New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014. 277p.

USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

By Jonathan Clements

FROM THE COVER: “Between the eighth and eleventh centuries, the Vikings surged from their Scandinavian homelands to trade, raid and invade along the coasts of Europe. Their reach stretched from Newfoundland to Baghdad, their battles were as far-flung as Africa and the Arctic. But were they great seafarers or desperate outcasts, noble heathens or oafish pirates, the last pagans or the first of the modern Europeans? This concise study puts medieval chronicles, Norse sagas and Muslim accounts alongside more recent research into ritual magic, genetic profiling and climatology. It includes biographical sketches of some of the most famous Vikings, from Erik Bloodaxe to Saint Olaf, King Canute to Leif the Lucky. It explains why the Danish king Harald Bluetooth lent his name to a twenty-first century wireless technology; why so many Icelandic settlers had Irish names; and how the last Viking colony was destroyed by English raiders.

NY. Carroll & Graf Publishers. 2005. 296p.

USED BOOK. MAY CONTAIN MARK-UP

by Dee Brown

FROM THE COVER: “Thelast words of this revisionary history of the American West come from an anonymous Indian: ‘They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept but one: they promised to take our land, and they took it. They are white Americans. like the author of this damning case against our national roots i n greed, perficly, ignoranceand malice. The motive force f o rour theft of land and identity from the Indians was Alanifest Destiny, the belief that white men were ordained to rule this continent, a policy that, in Dee Vrown’s words, “lifted land hunger to a lofty plane.’ Manifest destiny was a simple instrument to operate, once we got the hang of it. We would buy or battle the indians off the land we wanted…”

NY. Bantam. 1971. 498p.

By  Chris M. Smith  & Andrew V. Papachristos

The rise of organised crime changed Chicago violence structurally by creating networks of rivalries and conflicts wherein violence ricocheted. This study examines the organised crime violence network during Prohibition by analysing ‘violence brokers’ – individuals who committed multiple violence acts that linked separate violent events into a connected violence network. We analyse the two-mode violence network from the Capone Database, a relational database on early 1900s Chicago organised crime. Across 276 violent incidents attributed to organised crime were 334 suspected perpetrators of violence. We find that 20% of suspects were violence brokers, and nine brokers were violence super-spreaders linking the majority of suspects. We also find that violence brokers were in the thick of violence not just as suspects, but also as victims – violence brokers in this network experienced more victimisation than non-brokers. Unknowingly or knowingly, these violence brokers wove together a network, attack-by-attack, that transformed violence in Chicago.

GLOBAL CRIME                                               2022, VOL. 23, NO. 1, 23–43 

By Ian Braybrook

Ian Braybrook was a radio broadcaster in Central Victoria for many years. His childhood and early teen years are far removed from the "glamour" of that job.

Ian's family was desperately poor and the early death of his father had a far-reaching effect on his life. By the age of thirteen, when he got his fi rst job, he had lived in twenty homes and changed schools ten times.

His story moves from Daylesford, Trentham and Blackwood districts in the Central Highlands to East Gippsland, South Gippsland, the Western District and the Riverina of NSW. His many jobs included a telegram boy, farm hand, builders and general labourer, storeman, shift worker, fruit picker, shearing shed wool presser and truck driver. Along the way he was homeless, suffered two potentially fatal illnesses, experienced violent abuse and suffered a sexual assault.

Written originally for family, the story proved to be of far wider interest. The adventures and misadventures crammed into the first eighteen years of Ian's life provide an important record of the way life was for some in the depression and post-depression era.

Castlemaine Vic. Marilyn Bennet Publishing. 2018. 286p.