A Risky Business Crime In The Movies

After Brett Kavanaugh referenced "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" as a cultural landmark in his sexual assaulting youth and the realization that I am exactly the same age as the SCOTUS justice, it was time to go back and revisit fourteen comedies from the 1980's to see which hold up in the cultural shift of 2020.Includes breakdowns of "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," "Stripes," "Revenge of the Nerds," and "Weird Science" plus ten more you might remember.

The 1950's saw a major revolution on the movie front. In order to combat TV, the size of movies screens was changed forever. Unfortunately, there was no standard agreement as to what dimensions, the preferred new sized screen should be.

The compulsively readable and sometimes jaw-dropping story of the life of a notorious madam who played hostess to every gangster, politician, writer, sports star and Cafe Society swell worth knowing, and who as much as any single figure helped make the twenties roar—from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Most Famous Man in America. "A fast-paced tale of … Polly’s many court battles, newspaper headlines, mobster dealings and society gossip…. A breathless tale told through extraordinary research.” —The New York Times Book Review Simply put: Everybody came to Polly's. Pearl "Polly" Adler (1900-1962) was a diminutive dynamo whose Manhattan brothels in the Roaring Twenties became places not just for men to have the company of women but were key gathering places where the culturati and celebrity elite mingled with high society and with violent figures of the underworld—and had a good time doing it. As a Jewish immigrant from eastern Europe, Polly Adler's life is a classic American story of success and assimilation that starts like a novel by Henry Roth and then turns into a glittering real-life tale straight out of F. Scott Fitzgerald. She declared her ambition to be "the best goddam madam in all America" and succeeded wildly. Debby Applegate uses Polly's story as the key to unpacking just what made the 1920s the appallingly corrupt yet glamorous and transformational era that it was and how the collision between high and low is the unique ingredient that fuels American culture.

Dynamically written and richly illustrated, the Routledge International Handbook of Visual Criminology offers the first foundational primer on visual criminology. Spanning a variety of media and visual modes, this volume assembles established researchers whose work is essential to understanding the role of the visual in criminology and emergent thinkers whose work is taking visual criminology in new directions. This book is divided into five parts that each highlight a key aspect of visual criminology, exploring the diversity of methods, techniques and theoretical approaches currently shaping the field: • Part I introduces formative positions in the developments of visual criminology and explores the different disciplines that have contributed to analysing images. • Part II explores visual representations of crime across film, graphic art, documentary, police photography, press coverage and graffiti and urban aesthetics. • Part III discusses the relationship of visual criminology to criminal justice institutions like policing, punishment and law. • Part IV focuses on the distinctive ethical problems posed by the image, reflecting on the historical development, theoretical disputes and methodological issues involved. • Part V identifies new frameworks and emergent perspectives and reflects upon the distinctive challenges and limits that can be seen in this emerging field. This book includes a vibrant colour plate section and over a hundred black and white images, breaking down the barriers between original photography and artwork, historic paintings and illustrations and modern comics and films. This interdisciplinary book will be of interest to criminologists, sociologists, visual ethnographers, art historians and those engaged with media studies.

How do criminals communicate with each other? Unlike the rest of us, people planning crimes can't freely advertise their goods and services, nor can they rely on formal institutions to settle disputes and certify quality. They face uniquely intense dilemmas as they grapple with the basic problems of whom to trust, how to make themselves trusted, and how to handle information without being detected by rivals or police. In this book, one of the world's leading scholars of the mafia ranges from ancient Rome to the gangs of modern Japan, from the prisons of Western countries to terrorist and pedophile rings, to explain how despite these constraints, many criminals successfully stay in business. Diego Gambetta shows that as villains balance the lure of criminal reward against the fear of dire punishment, they are inspired to unexpected feats of subtlety and ingenuity in communication. He uncovers the logic of the often bizarre ways in which inveterate and occasional criminals solve their dilemmas, such as why the tattoos and scars etched on a criminal's body function as lines on a professional résumé, why inmates resort to violence to establish their position in the prison pecking order, and why mobsters are partial to nicknames and imitate the behavior they see in mafia movies. Even deliberate self-harm and the disclosure of their crimes are strategically employed by criminals to convey important messages. By deciphering how criminals signal to each other in a lawless universe, this gruesomely entertaining and incisive book provides a quantum leap in our ability to make sense of their actions.

In a thorough reappraisal of the white-collar and corporate crime scene, this Second Edition builds on the first edition to complete the criminal narrative in an outstanding reference resource.

'In a book this good, in the company of a mind this judicious and fine, the reader is left wanting more' Telegraph Poetry, poker, mountaineering, novels - a sparkling collection of essays from Britain's best-loved man of letters ________________________ Al Alvarez's writing career has come in many guises. One of the most influential post-war critics, he has written profoundly and eloquently about writers and their craft for over fifty years. But Alvarez has also been a passionate amateur of risky pursuits - poker playing, mountaineering, flying in aeroplanes - and he written about these subjects with a rare depth, liveliness and perception. This is a collection of his finest essays. Ranging from trenchant literary criticism to accounts of polar expeditions and poker championships, Risky Business is a sparkling and eclectic anthology from our most unusual man of letters.