Fifty years after Charles Manson's shocking murders, the American true crime writer David J. Krajicek takes a fresh look at his life and crimes in a portrait of evil that reveals the dark side of the swinging Sixties. Using Manson's own words and those of his naive followers, Krajicek, a former professor of journalism at Columbia University, shows how the manipulative ex-convict managed to build a harem of acolytes who committed murder on his behalf, including that of the emerging film star Sharon Tate.Krajicek portrays Manson, raised amid impoverished Appalachian despair, as an unlikely messiah. Freshly paroled after spending most of his young life locked up, he stumbled into San Francisco in 1967 just as thousands of impressionable young people were streaming into town for the Summer of Love. Using skills of manipulation he gained in prison, Manson assembled his personal commune cult of hippies, three-quarters of whom were women. He began to control their bodies and minds as they moved from one LA flop to the next, graduating from peace and love to horrific acts of violence that shook the world.
The narrative is framed by the seminal events of the time--the sexual revolution, the civil rights movement, race riots, space exploration, and the emergence of the drug-happy hippie culture and psychedelic music scene. Charles Manson became the personification of Flower Power gone to seed.
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Book Description:
This chilling exploration of the Manson murders gives fresh insight into the Manson 'Family'-- who they were, the atrocities they committed, and Charles Manson's orchestration of this bloodbath that bought the decade of Peace and Love to a gory end.
About the Author:
Biography
David J. Krajicek is a prominent American true crime journalist and author. For the past two decades the native Nebraskan has written The Justice Story, a weekly feature that looks back at archival crimes for The New York Daily News. He is the author of nine books, including Mass Killers: Inside the Minds of Men Who Murder (also for Arcturus); the regional best-seller True Crime: Missouri (Stackpole); Scooped (Columbia University Press), a critical analysis of the media's coverage of crime; and Murder, American Style, which is drawn from his newspaper columns. A former Columbia University journalism professor, his work has appeared in many publications, including the The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Village Voice.
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- PublisherArcturus
- Publication date2019
- ISBN 10 1789505526
- ISBN 13 9781789505528
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages256
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Rating