"The Powers of Reaction and Despotism Never Sleep"

"Darrow's brand of agitating, most evident in his famous closing arguments, took the form of placing his clients within the context of the social system prosecuting them. Defending labor leaders accused (often justifiably) of using violence, he reminded jurors that they were fighting against corporations whose brutal tactics and unconscionable working conditions had killed and maimed countless workers.
"Speaking to members of an all-white jury in Detroit trying 11 black men who had allegedly wielded guns against a mob menacing their home, he asked, 'Do you think that all the rights which you claim for yourselves are to be denied them?' Plenty of people thought exactly that in 1925, but by the time Darrow got through with jurors, they had almost always been persuaded to share, at least temporarily, the compassion that fueled his activism."

Wendy Smith in the Los Angeles Times reviews John A. Farrell's Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned.

"The War with Dynamite"

"There were six blasts in all. About 100 people had been at work, and now they were all trapped in flames, smoke and debris. Escape was a battle. Twenty-one people died.
"What caused the explosion? Was it a gas leak? An anarchist bomb? An attack by union members who opposed the adamantly closed-shop policies of the paper's owner, Harrison Gray Otis? Or was it an insurance scam, a scheme to benefit from the $100,000 policy the paper had recently taken on the structure?"

In the Los Angeles Times, Howard Blum tells the story of the 1910 bombing of the Times building.

And Richard Rayner reviews Blum's American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century.

Cause I Can See Right Through You

"Neither killer showed any remorse after being captured and indicted for murder. Kidnapping had been involved; they had sent a ransom note to their victim's family. But money wasn't their true motive. Perfection was. Leopold and Loeb dreamed of committing the perfect crime, and they found philosophical backing for their desire in Nietzsche's notion of the Übermensch. Leopold wrote to Loeb: 'A superman . . . is, on account of certain superior qualities inherent in him, exempted from the ordinary laws which govern men. He is not liable for anything he may do.'"

Joseph Epstein in The Wall Street Journal reviews Simon Baatz's For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder that Shocked Chicago.