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American homicide /
Randolph Roth charts changes in the character and incidence of homicide in the U.S. from colonial times to the present. He argues that the United States is distinctive in its level of violence among unrelated adults--friends, acquaintances, and strangers. America was extraordinarily homicidal in the...
| Call Number: | Libro Electrónico |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic eBook |
| Language: | Inglés |
| Published: |
Cambridge, Mass. :
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
2009.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Texto completo |
| Summary: | Randolph Roth charts changes in the character and incidence of homicide in the U.S. from colonial times to the present. He argues that the United States is distinctive in its level of violence among unrelated adults--friends, acquaintances, and strangers. America was extraordinarily homicidal in the mid-seventeenth century, but it became relatively non-homicidal by the mid-eighteenth century. Then the homicide rate skyrocketed from the late 1840s through the mid-1870s, while rates in most other Western nations held steady or fell. That surge--and all subsequent increases in the homicide rate--correlated closely with four distinct phenomena: political instability; a loss of government legitimacy; a loss of fellow-feeling among members of society caused by racial, religious, or political antagonism; and a loss of faith in the social hierarchy. Those four factors, Roth argues, best explain why homicide rates have gone up and down over the past four centuries, and why the United States is today the most homicidal affluent nation.--From publisher description. |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (xv, 655 pages) : illustrations, map |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 588-640) and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780674054547 0674054547 0674035208 9780674035201 |