Wow! I didn’t know i needed a history of axes, but here we are. This was so entertaining and informative.

I was drawn to this book because I hoped it would be a fairly concise and quick overview of an interesting topic. I wouldn't call myself a true crime fan, but I do like reading books on the topic from time to time, so this seemed like a good choice for me.

Unfortunately, this book is only kind of what it claims to be. The summary says Whack Job is "[a] brilliant and bloody examination of the axe's foundational role in human history, from prehistoric violence, to war and executions, to newspaper headlines and popular culture", but the subtitle of the book specifically says it's a "history of axe murder". I feel like the summary gives a more accurate idea of the contents of this book. Rather than being about "axe murder" (a term the author never really defines), I thought this book was more about axes in general. Some chapters barely even feature axe-related violence. Around halfway through when we get to the chapter on Lizzie Borden, the book truly becomes a look at axe murders, but before that it's a very unorganized collection of historical anecdotes that might happen to involve an axe.

The first half of the book also felt very surface-level in its analysis of both the historical events and the importance of the axe in that specific historic and cultural moment. If everything leading up to Henry XIII's chapter had been condensed into one chapter just running through the history and significance of axes in various cultures with some anecdotes thrown in, I don't think much would be lost.

(The chapter on Henry VIII straddles the line between "tangentially axe-related" and "actual axe murder". I would say that a state-sanctioned execution is murder, but I wouldn't classify a beheading as "axe murder". Which goes back to the problem of the author not clearly defining her parameters for what is and isn't an axe murder.)

As for the structure of the book, I didn't really like the way the chapters were set up. The first part of each chapter (i.e., the largest/main part) is about a specific incident of "axe murder". The very end of each chapter is a short introduction to specific type of axe. The axe introduced at the end of one chapter tells you where the next chapter will take place (e.g., the second chapter ends with a description of the yue, a type of Chinese axe, and the third chapter talks about China). I personally didn't like that. I would've preferred a shorter paragraph about the axe as an epigraph at the beginning of the axe's relevant chapter.

Also, the author's writing style just didn't work for me. She is trying to inject some humor into the narrative to make a pretty grim topic a bit more bearable. But the jokes just didn't land for me personally.

While the second half of this book was quite enjoyable, that doesn't cancel out my many problems with the first half. There was a major lack of focus throughout and some pretty lackluster writing.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

Wow I really loved this! I went in already expecting to like it just based on the fact that I love a niche deep dive, but the author really surpassed my expectations.

The story was linear, easy to follow, engaging and struck just the right balance between thoughtful, respectful and humorous.

Would absolutely recommend this one

Thank you, NetGalley, for providing me a copy of this book.
I really wanted to love this book, given my affinity for both true crime and history, but I think I expected something somewhat different, and that's on me. There are a lot of facts, clearly a lot of research happening, and also some opinions thrown in. There newer information and on (and I'm talking about Henry VIII, so that gives you an idea of how far back the researched information goes) is more relatable, as it is more familiar. I have to say that up until that point it wasn't as gripping. Loved the second half/two-thirds of the book.

I don't always believe authors need to give people exactly what they are expecting. Some of the best stories can come out of nowhere. I am reminded of Patrick Radden Keefe's amazing Say Nothing. It was billed as a true crime story about a woman who was disappeared. It was a bit of a misdirection, but Keefe ultimately told such an exceptional story that myself (and a lot of other people based on reviews) let it slide without a peep. I bring this up because Rachel McCarthy James's Whack Job: A History of the Axe Murder is quite misleading in a bad way.

When you think "axe murder", you probably think of Lizzie Borden. She is chapter 9 out of 12 in this book. For historical true crime junkies (guilty!), you also think of the Axeman of New Orleans. The Axeman is not in this book. What is in this book is a hodgepodge of killings that most people would not define as axe murders. In fact, Lizzie Borden at chapter 9 is probably the first axe murder in the narrative. Before that are political executions, early man killings (maybe!) with something sharp, and stories which may actually be myths.

Now, I always say the author gets to write the book they want and not what the reader wants. James is allowed to define the term axe murder any way she wants. However, James doesn't even fully define what an axe murder is from her perspective at any point (pun intended!) in the book. This causes another major problem with the question of what is the book really about? Is it just a loose list of killings with a sharp object? Is there anything deeper here? By the end , I did not find any real analysis or reason for this book to exist.

There is also a major tone problem. James will often times write almost flippantly or casually and then will veer off and quote a scholar or academic. I don't have a problem with either approach, but mixing them together makes it seem like two books jammed together. It also leads James to use some gross word choices or be overly simplistic about events around what she is writing. I read an ARC, so I won't quote directly from the source, but I sincerely hope the author and publisher take a second look at the section on the Korean axe murder incident where two U.N. officers were murdered. It is a shallow explanation and vaguely dismissive of a tragedy.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and St. Martin's Press.)

A fascinating read on a topic that permeates culture. I found this to be a really interesting read as it wove the history of axe murders in a comprehensive narrative that made sense. After hearing about so many through movies and pop culture, it was interesting to see where the folktales and actual happenstances came from and how they influence our interpretations of them today.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for this ARC for an exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press for providing this ARC for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Whack Job: A History of Axe Murder by Rachel McCarthey James is a pop nonfiction title with an eye-popping title and an even snappier subject. While the book bills itself as a walk through the human history of “axe murder” the book doesn’t seem to find its footing.

From the start, the very definition of ‘axe murder’ never really gets pinned down. In order to create a cohesive history of anything, parameters help create some guidance as to what’s of narratrice violence. Across the chapters the “axe murder” vacillates as wildly from ‘inconclusive evidence of early hominid violence with blunt tool’ to ‘political executions.’ Neither of these things really seem to fit the model and make it seem as if perhaps there aren’t data points to create a full story. The book is notably brief and skips known axe murders like the early 1900s Axeman of New Orleans, which is a somewhat confusing omission.

The other element that really holds the book back is the lack of cohesion. Across the several chapters there is very little cohesion, very little thesis. With the exception of the brief sections at the end of the chapters, the chapters feel more like a series of dots than a true “line.” The writing, like the chapters, at times couldn’t seem to pick a tone. In certain chapters the tone bordered on scholarly and dry and in others it was peppered with asides from the author. While the intrusion of some snark from the author isn’t unwanted in a good pop nonfiction piece, it’s the inconsistency that really struck me.

The book was not totally without bright spots. When the author gets it right, they really do a wonderful job of creating dynamic and interesting vignettes. The balance of scene setting and facts was particularly good in the chapters about Lizzie Borden and the murders at Taliesin.

For the truly voracious true crime reader who had an appetite for knowing about any and all things morbid, this could be an interesting read. That being said, I thought the issues in macro editing and tonal choices did not make it something I’d personally recommend. 2/5.

Thank you to the author/publisher and Netgalley for a copy of this book.

I thought this would be more true crime storyline driven but it started off with a large history about the backstory of axes lol. It was still an interesting read but just an FYI before jumping into a story that you might think to be different.

Whack Job by Rachel McCarthy James, this was a great book with lots of crimes I never heard of and then some I have the one thing they all have in common is all the murders were done with the axe. If you find True Crime is interesting as I do you definitely find the stories enjoyable as much as one can enjoy True Crime. I like this book as much as I liked miss James‘s first book with her dad Bill, which was called The Man From The Train, another True Crime book I absolutely enjoyed and was obsessed with and this one is equally as interesting. I totally totally recommend it. #NetGalley, #RachelMcCarthyJames, #WhackJob,.

As a historian who loves niche topics, I loved this book. I enjoyed how it was structured and I found the tone to be just light enough while holding space for the heavy stories it was telling. I think it could have benefited from some edits and images, but I will be recommending it to anyone who likes nonfiction!

I loved this so much. Great historical research, fantastic stories, and a wonderful writing style. I hope the actual book has illustrations that didn't show up on my kindle because some of these axes sound like they look amazing.

This book was a little bit dull and boring for me. It was too dense and it made it very very hard to get through. I really wanted to DNF this book but I struggled on..

Thank you to NetGalley, to the author, and to the publisher for this complementary ARC in exchange for my honest review!!!

***Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this upcoming book***
While not what I was initially expecting based on the cover and description of the book, this was a very entertaining and informative look at the history of axe murders. What I didn’t expect was the book to go back literally to the beginning of human life on earth and provide history lessons on how the axe was created and the part it played in the lives of these early humans. There was a long section about Viking society and the axe’s role in that as well. All of it was well researched, thoughtful and often times hilarious….as hilarious as a book about axe murders can be!

This would be a great addition to any true crime fan’s shelf or for anyone who likes their history a little tongue in cheek. Before reading this, I had no idea that this is the same author who co-wrote The Man from the Train, which I own but haven’t had a chance to split open (see what I did there?) yet. Now, I am very much looking forward to doing so!

This is a hard book to review because I have such mixed feelings about it. The writing is sharp, witty, and tinged with a delightful sense of dry humor. The research is impeccable; if history is your jam, this one will hit all the spots. But...I didn't particularly enjoy it. I think I was expecting something more juicy and salacious and less of an academic treatise. This is entirely a me issue and has nothing to do with the excellent work the author put into creating this work. This won't be for everyone, but I suspect many readers will rightfully LOVE it and others will be bored. Overall 4 stars, but for me, a 3 star read.

Engaging and entertaining. A recommended purchase for collections where deep dive niche NF is popular - or where readers are missing Mary Roach.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Whack Job was a really great book. It is equal parts entertaining and informative. McCarthy James has a really engaging writing style that helped with the flow of this book. I definitely found myself wanting to know more about axes, and the history surrounding some of them. I couldn’t put this book down!

This was a fascinating history book about the axe, it had that research element that I was looking for from the description. The research was so well done and had me learning about what was happening. Rachel McCarthy James wrote this well and I hope to read more.

Everything you ever wanted to know about axe-murder.

Rachel McCarthy James spins a vivid yarn of the history of this most prosaic of murder weapons. As long as humans have had axes, a transformative and versatile tool, we have also used them to end other human’s lives. As long as we’ve used them to chop tree branches, we’ve also used them to sever human limbs, really the comparisons are endless. More dramatic than a knife but easier to use than a sword, McCarthy James sets out to delve into the “why” behind this particular form of homicide.

All the classics are here, Lizze Borden gets a chapter mostly to herself (I think she was innocent, by the way) and the iconic axe centric scene in The Shining gets a moment in the limelight as well. But more interesting are the lesser known axe-murders through history, Freydis of Greenland, Seqenre Tao, and William Tillman (who takes the prize for the most based axe murder in this or any other book, seriously, look him up and get that man a movie deal).

Through it all the writing is vivid, cogent, and rapid, reading this is like taking a tour of an especially macabre museum from a funny but very well informed tour guide. While the details can be shocking even in our violence saturated age (holy crap was the chapter on Linda Joyce Glucoft upsetting on a visceral level), this book is ultimately informative and offers a meditative view on an oft sensationalized topic.

(3.5 rounded down) This is exactly what the cover advertises - a history of axe murder. Twelve murders divided into twelve chapters. I definitely preferred the back half of the book to the front half. I found the chapters on crimes committed in ancient times to be hard to connect with - the writing was a bit clinical and I found myself reading without taking anything in. The crimes that were more modern and more well-known (Lizzie Borden, Candy Montgomery, and the axe murders at Frank Lloyd’s Wright’s Taliesin), I found to be easier to read (which is a weird sentence to write about axe murder, but hey, that’s what I signed up for with the title). It is nice to read a true crime-esque book that is focused on a central topic as opposed to a singular crime. It’s not exploitative due to the fact that the murders aren’t the central topic - the crime if axe murder is. If the title sounds interesting to you, I feel like you would enjoy your time with this.

Whack Job takes readers on an unflinching journey through humanity’s fascination with the axe, tracing its evolution from tool to terror. This captivating narrative hacks through centuries of bloody history—from ancient murder scenes to pop culture shockers. Sharp, brutal, and eerily illuminating, it’s a gripping exploration of how a simple blade has embedded itself into human lore. And that cover is to die for!

Whack Job doesn’t shy away from its bloody past; instead, it dives headfirst into infamous murders, historical executions, and the cultural legacy of this deadly tool. With each chapter, it challenges readers to confront the darker side of our relationship with tools—a reminder that behind every blade lies a reflection of our most primal instincts.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the opportunity to read and review Whack Job: A History of Axe Murder prepublication.