In 1924, Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb kidnapped and murdered Robert (Bobby) Franks. The cruel and inexplicable behavior of two highly educated, wealthy, and seemingly normal young men (both still technically teenagers) was an extraordinary and well-publicized event that exploded in the midst of America's jazzy decade of prosperity and has haunted our imagination ever since. It was called then (and later) “the crime of the century” and was widely documented in the newspapers of the time, by many contemporary books, especially those dealing with psychological matters, and in subsequent accounts. These include Hal Higdon's highly readable and comprehensive The Crime of the Century (1975), recollections by Leopold's attorney (Elmer Gertz, A Handful of Clients [1965]), and the only slightly fictionalized novel Compulsion by Meyer Levin (1956). The case has also been the subject of at least three major motion pictures. I included a long analysis of the case in my history of child kidnapping, Kidnapped (1997), because the kidnapping was such an essential ingredient in the plotting by the two murderers, and in a piece I wrote in a professional historical journal (Paula S. Fass, “Making and Remaking An Event: The Leopold and Loeb Case in American Culture,” Journal of American History 80 [1993]: 919–51). It is a compelling story, containing a cast of vivid characters, including Clarence Darrow for the defense, enigmatic motives, and full of rumors about sexual motives and the erotic relationship between the two major actors. Now, Simon Baatz tells this story once again.

For The Thrill of It: Leopold and Loeb and the Murder That Shocked Chicago tells the story clearly and is aimed at a general public, which the author claims has been largely ignored by historians (454), a public that deserves to be better served by our professional memory keepers. Fair enough. But, how, one needs to ask, is the general public served by the addition of this book? Is there something new to be learned, some aspect of the case freshly illuminated, something urgent we need to know as citizens, parents, educators, jurors, students? Unfortunately, I think not. This book digs up the story in order to rehash a sensational case, not in order to understand it better or provide us with any kind of guidance as general readers.

For those readers who come with a specialized interest in criminal procedure, the history of the law, juvenile justice, or the intersection between law and medicine or law and psychiatry, all subjects intertwined in the case and its resolution, the yield is even less apparent. Baatz has fully detailed the specifics in these areas in accessible language but has provided no added value intellectually or analytically. I have an interest in all these matters but learned nothing new from Parts I and III where the crime, the psychiatric reports, and the sentencing hearing (the two had confessed) held before Judge John Caverly are recounted. Nor was I significantly enlightened by Part II, although I admit that some of this material on Clarence Darrow and Robert Crowe, the chief counsel for the defense and the chief prosecutor, was new to me. Baatz tells us about the careers of both in the context of Chicago politics. But how this information helps us to better understand the crime or its courtroom resolution is never explained. In other words, Simon Baatz has assiduously stayed away from any form of analysis, hypothesis, or discussion that would justify a new book on the subject and would help the scholar better to evaluate this intriguing crime and its denouement.

It is certainly true that Americans love spectacular trials and that they are especially attentive to those that either explore the grizzlier outer reaches of the imagination, or involve well-known personalities. Our current experience in this regard has a long history, going back to the nineteenth century. (Karen Halttunen, Murder Most Foul [1998]). For every O. J. Simpson there has been a John Thaw. It is useful for historians to understand why and how crimes and their trials operate in the public imagination and as cultural dramaturgy. But most historians who have been intrigued by these cases have had something to say about the cultural and intellectual context, the nature of the media, or the political or economic climate in which they are showcased. Baatz provides us with no significant arguments in this regard. Instead, he relies on the story exclusively, as if a story is transparently important. In so doing, he not only gives academics no reason to read this book but he also underestimates the needs and desires of his target audience—the general reader—who always relies on the storyteller for a point of view, a set of reflections and, above all, a compelling vision. Historians have obligations both to their professional colleagues and to the larger public—obligations about which Baatz is either unaware or uninterested. If this book was written to exploit the public's interest in sensational cases, I hope the public shows its superior wisdom.