For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder That Shocked Chicago | 
 enlarge | Author: Simon Baatz
Publisher: Harper
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 19710
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 560
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.5
ISBN: 0060781009
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.1523092
EAN: 9780060781002
Publication Date: August 1, 2008
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Condition: Brand New. 100% money back guarantee. All books shipped from Strand Bookstore, New York City, USA.
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Product Description
It was a crime that shocked the nation, a brutal murder in Chicago in 1924 of a child, by two wealthy college students who killed solely for the thrill of the experience. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb had first met several years earlier, and their friendship had blossomed into a love affair. Both were intellectuals—too smart, they believed, for the police to catch them. However, the police had recovered an important clue at the scene of the crime—a pair of eyeglasses—and soon both Leopold and Loeb were in the custody of Cook County. They confessed, and Robert Crowe, the state's attorney, announced to newspaper reporters that he had a hanging case. No defense, he believed, would save the two ruthless killers from the gallows. Set against the backdrop of the 1920s, a time of prosperity, self-indulgence, and hedonistic excess, For the Thrill of It draws the reader into a lost world, a world of speakeasies and flappers, of gangsters and gin parties, that existed when Chicago was a lawless city on the brink of anarchy. The rejection of morality, the worship of youth, and the obsession with sex had seemingly found their expression in this callous murder. But the murder is only half the story. After Leopold and Loeb were arrested, their families hired Clarence Darrow to defend their sons. Darrow, the most famous lawyer in America, aimed to save Leopold and Loeb from the death penalty by showing that the crime was the inevitable consequence of sexual and psychological abuse that each defendant had suffered during childhood at the hands of adults. Both boys, Darrow claimed, had experienced a compulsion to kill, and therefore, he appealed to the judge, they should be spared capital punishment. However, Darrow faced a worthy adversary in his prosecuting attorney: Robert Crowe was clever, cunning, and charismatic, with ambitions of becoming Chicago's next mayor—and he was determined to send Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb to their deaths. A masterful storyteller, Simon Baatz has written a gripping account of the infamous Leopold and Loeb case. Using court records and recently discovered transcripts, Baatz shows how the pathological relationship between Leopold and Loeb inexorably led to their crime. This thrilling narrative of murder and mystery in the Jazz Age will keep the reader in a continual state of suspense as the story twists and turns its way to an unexpected conclusion.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
 A MUST_READ August 10, 2008
11 out of 12 found this review helpful
This book is a must-read for anyone with an interest in human behavior, the criminal process, Chicago, Clarence Darrow or political ambition, among many other things. Baatz has taken a chilling and complex case and made it terrifically readable and exciting. His meticulous research assures the reader that s/he is reading non-fiction, yet Baatz is a superb storyteller and the book reads like a great piece of fiction. All of these events took place in my neighborhood in Chicago, and I now find it easy -- and creepy -- to picture the parties to this crime on my streets. I can't praise this book enough, I hope someone makes a movie of it that is faithful to this well-told story.
Beautifully written - Reads like In Cold Blood August 8, 2008
14 out of 18 found this review helpful
Baatz meticulously researches a fascinating subject and then tells the story in beautifully written prose. It is not an exaggeration to compare his book favorably with Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, i.e. I couldn't put it down! For The Thrill Of It is the best book ever written on the subject matter and is one of the most riveting non-fiction crime books of our time.
The Franks Case Revisited September 1, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In For the Thrill of It, the author has done a commendable job of producing a well researched book on one of the more celebrated trials in the early part of the 20th century. In addition, he possesses a writing style that makes this book an easy read.
Persons interested in crime, criminal behavior, and the courts will find reading this book enjoyable and enlightening.
The Legend of Leopold and Loeb Comes To Life! September 13, 2008
6 out of 9 found this review helpful
Despite the fact that Bobby Franks's grizzly murder took place in 1924, the subsequent trial of Leopold and Loeb has never let go of our collective imaginations. When one reads For the Thrill of It, one can easily understand why. The murder of Bobby Franks by wealthy teenagers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb touces on many issues that are still fervently talked about today: the limits of 'insanity' as a mitigating factor in sentencing, the morality of the death penalty, whether individuals are capable of free choice or victims of biological and environmental factors.
For those unfamiliar, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were wealthy and well-educated teenagers, both with very bizarre childhoods, who developed a bizarre and dependent friendhip (and love affair). These two anti-social teenagers decided that it might be fun to kidnap, torture, and kill - they debated on whether rape should be added - a schoolboy selected at random. Their desire was to create the perfect crime. (See for yourself whether Nathan Leopol is not one of the most chilling and perplexing characters you have ever read about!)
At this, hey failed. The bloodied body was found within 48 hours, and the boys' additional plan to extort ransom from the boy's father failed as well. What ensued was a wildly controversial trial that captured national attention, as legendary defense attorney Clarance Darrow attempted to avoid the death penalty for the two obviously guilty boys. The argument: the two boys were victims not only of their bizarre childhoods, but biological peculiarities (this was the age of endocrinology).
This book is a fascinating recount of the murder, the trial, and the aftermath. Baatz writing is captivating and the book reads like fiction. Baatz is as entertaining as he is thorough. We are not only treated to a thoughtful recount of the lives of Leopold, Loeb, and many other involved characters, but also of the state of the 1920s criminal justice system and the burgeoning field of psychiatry. Through all of this, we find out just how revolutionary the goings on of the trial of Leopold and Loeb were; it would not be an overstatement to say that many American ideas - views on the death penalty, human choice, and the nature of insanity - were challenged if not turned on their heads.
It is also a testament to Simon Baatz's acumen that this almost-600-page book never once seemed too long. All of the information given was necessary to the book's relentless forward motion. In the end, For the Thrill of It reads like a first rate murder mystery that allows its readers to learn quite a bit along the way.
This has been one of my favorite reads of the year.
 Failed ubermenschen August 9, 2008
20 out of 21 found this review helpful
How to understand Leopold and Loeb, the two young men who live on in national memory as the poor rich kids who murdered a youngster in 1924 to see if they could pull off the perfect crime? Motivated on the surface by a Nietzsche-inspired urge to go beyond conventional standards of good and evil, the crime actually seems to have been drawn from much murkier waters: sexual passion, feelings of inadequacy and rage, cultural ennui. Like Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov, what Loeb and Leopold claimed as their motive was only the tip of the iceberg.
Simon Baatz's For the Thrill of It explores the underbelly of Leopold and Loeb by focusing heavily on the psychiatric testimony of three expert witnesses marshalled by defense attorney Clarence Darrow. These three witnesses--William White, William Healy, and Bernard Glueck--shared Darrow's view that most of criminal law was really a subset of psychology: criminals are suffering from mental disorders and need to be treated rather than punished. Despite this conviction, Darrow entered a plea of guilty for his two clients, fearing that if he copped an insanity plea and took the case to a jury, he would lose. So his strategy instead was to plead guilty and try to lessen the sentence by convincing the presiding judge that Leopold and Loeb were crazy as bedbugs.
It didn't work. The two were sentenced to 99 years. Loeb was killed in prison 12 years later; Leopold was eventually paroled and died in Puerto Rico.
Baatz's book is both an intriguing history of one of the most notorious American crimes of the twentieth century, but also an interesting reflection on the insanity plea in criminal cases, told through the intense courtroom battle between Darrow and Prosecuting Attorney Richard Crowe But in all honesty, at times I found myself flipping pages. The book is perhaps 100 pages longer than it need be, and Baatz's invention of scenes and dialogue and internal monologues for the key players in a book that purports to be history is (for me, at least) disconcerting. The story is dramatic enough without Baatz's "literary" interpolations.
Still, well worth reading. Leopold and Loeb remain intensely interesting characters. One can understand, to some extent, the psychology behind In Cold Blood murderers Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. They were social outcasts, "losers" seething with anger at the cards dealt them by fate. But what motivated Leopold and Loeb, wealthy, intelligent, educated, healthy young men? Even after a reading of Baatz, they remain mysterious.
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