I really enjoyed this book. As the teacher in charge of stocking the senior school library, I like to ensure that the books are diverse and the students are exposed to both excellent fiction and excellent modern non-fiction. I think that this is both a fascinating and well-written book that has much to recommend it and will keep the students interests. It is good to stretch their reading interests by providing them with books about subjects they might never have considered before and this definitely does the job well. It is also good to find books that I know the teaching staff might enjoy as well as the students and I definitely think that this applies in both cases. Absolutely recommend wholeheartedly; a fantastic read.

Maybe it's pretentious to like The New Yorker and stories from The New Yorker....and maybe I don't really care.

This is a fantastic collection of true crime stories collected from the 1970's to current times. Calvin Trillin goes beyond the details and gets to the heart. From mining towns to unhappy immigrants to rebelling teens, these stories cover the loss that is felt.

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for this review.

As a long time reader of the New Yorker, it’s always a treat to read collections of articles and essays by members of their writing staff. And Calvin Trillin is one of my favorites from that staff. Trillin is well known for writing about food, but I prefer the articles that showcase his reporting skills. “Killings,” which was originally published in 1984, has been reissued and expanded and is a valuable assemblage of his reporting about individual murders. He takes a unique vantage point in these narratives - there is no search for the killer and there is minimal description of violence. Instead, Trillin is interested in writing about America. Focusing on a killing in a community allows him to do precisely that - write about a specific locale and the people who inhabit it. As he says in the book’s introduction, “These stories are meant to be more about how Americans live than about how some of them die … Their appeal was that they were about specific humans, and I chose to tell them, of course , because they sounded interesting.” The articles collected here range across America and examine a wide variety of motives for murder and how the social mores of a community can affect what they see as justice.

John McPhee (another favorite New Yorker writer) describes in his memorable article “Structure” how difficult and perplexing it can be to decide at what point to begin an article. But like McPhee, Trillin knows exactly where to begin and end each story and doesn’t adhere to a strictly linear manner of describing the events. Telling the story in any other sequence than he does would rob it of some of it’s power and poignancy.

While there is enough detail in each story to satisfy true crime devotees, what really makes this collection stand out is Trillin’s reporting and writing style, the insight and empathy he brings to each story, and the remarkable manner in which brings individual people and places to life.

My review was posted on Goodreads on 4/2/17

I got an ARC for Kindle from Netgalley and Random House True Crime for this book Killings which has been updated with new stories added for this 2017 edition by the author Calvin Trillin.

This is an interesting collection of true stories of deaths of people by all sorts of sudden means. They are all quite different and unusual and tend to keep your interest from one to the next. You never quite know what to expect as you are reading, you just know something is going to happen. Succinct writing, wry and entertaining. Life abruptly cut short. This is some of the best of why I enjoy non-fiction, because at times its just stranger than fiction could ever hope to be. At least for me, anyway.

This was a very interesting book. Based on stories that were written for a major publications over a period of time. This book gives insight on various deaths in various places at various times. Includes statements/comments from locals and a background on the killing that was committed. If you are a fan of non fiction and the backstory to why crimes were committed, this is the book for you. I really enjoyed this book and would recommend highly. Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the advanced reading copy of this book in return for my honest review.

The biggest challenge in reading this book were the solid blocks of text in each story.

The actual stories were excellent, as much as stories about death and murder can be excellent. Trillim has an wonderful eye for the details that flesh out facts that could seem dry and tragic. The sudden and irrevocable impact on families and communities when sudden death occurs is profound. Understanding and learning to live with it is another.
A very illuminating aspect of his reporting is the comments made by others in retrospect; how something could be seen, or if only one person had said or acted in a different way, how different the outcome could have been.

I learned a lot from these stories, both about how some deaths can seem inevitable and how finding out why and how they occur is terrifying if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time. No one walked away unscathed.