HARD JUSTICE Ludlow, Texas, has a problem. A band of rowdy and violent cowhands from the Circle K ranch have been terrorizing the small town: drinking, smashing windows, and even shooting up innocent citizens. With the townsfolk terrorized, Ludlow is on its way to being totally under the gang’s control—unless someone does something about it. Asa Delaware has a good reputation as a very bad man to cross. Roaming the West with his two grown children and his gun for hire, he’s known as the Town Tamer. For a fee, he’ll fix what—or who—is causing a ruckus. There isn’t any job he’ll walk away from or any challenge he finds too hard. But when his children start backing out of the family business, Delaware may find out what it is means to be on the business end of a shotgun barrel…
Clint comes to Warbend for no other reason than he’s passing through. But he finds that the town is in the grips of a deadly conflict. Gunmen have taken control of the town, causing the town fathers to hire a group of well known Town Tamers, led by self-styled Captain Bennigan. The Captain has had badges made up, which he and his men wear, but which have no official standing. Clint watches the conflict take place, and soon realizes that the town tamers have taken their name too literally. The townspeople soon find that their hired guns are worse than the guns they’ve been hired to tame.
From the pages of a lost journal comes the true story of a small town police officer in the 1980s. Author, Randy H. Greer, details his experiences fighting crime in an era when resources were slim, backup was far away, and danger was often present. Equipped only with a badge and revolver Greer patrolled the streets and back roads of this rural community battling ruffians, gun runners, thieves, killers, and even town officials. Greers memoirs include accounts of manhunts and murders, sheriffs and shenanigans, triumphs and tragedies, punctuated with historical events of the region. Working the night shift, Greer shares details of a world virtually unknown by most, a world where criminal activity hides under the cover of darkness. A personal account of the life and times of a small town police officer, this book serves as a tribute to those who dedicate their lives to protect and serve.
Stereotypical descriptions showcase West Germany as an "economic miracle" or cast it in the narrow terms of Cold War politics. Such depictions neglect how material hardship preceded success and how a fascist past and communist sibling complicated the country's image as a bastion of democracy. Even more disappointing, they brush over a rich and variegated cultural history. That history is told here by leading scholars of German history, literature, and film in what is destined to become the volume on postwar West German culture and society. In it, we read about the lives of real people--from German children fathered by black Occupation soldiers to communist activists, from surviving Jews to Turkish "guest" workers, from young hoodlums to middle-class mothers. We learn how they experienced and represented the institutions and social forces that shaped their lives and defined the wider culture. We see how two generations of West Germans came to terms not only with war guilt, division from East Germany, and the Angst of nuclear threat, but also with changing gender relations, the Americanization of popular culture, and the rise of conspicuous consumption. Individually, these essays peer into fascinating, overlooked corners of German life. Together, they tell what it really meant to live in West Germany in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Volker R. Berghahn, Frank Biess, Heide Fehrenbach, Michael Geyer, Elizabeth Heineman, Ulrich Herbert, Maria Höhn, Karin Hunn, Kaspar Maase, Richard McCormick, Robert G. Moeller, Lutz Niethammer, Uta G. Poiger, Diethelm Prowe, Frank Stern, Arnold Sywottek, Frank Trommler, Eric D. Weitz, Juliane Wetzel, and Dorothee Wierling.
Fighting the good fight is enough reason for former deputy marshal Gideon Hawk to get in on the action. But when the defenseless are involved, it gets personal for the Rogue Lawman… Brazos got off lucky this time. His Pa, Blue Tierney, saved him from receiving due justice at the hands of a hangman in Trinity Ridge. Which means the Tierneys and their gang are continuing to roam free spreading their terror… What this town needs is a temporary lawman who exhibits little diplomacy when it comes to doling out justice—and Gideon Hawk is that man. Not everyone is sure of him though, especially a hard-nosed yet fetching schoolteacher and some shady businessmen… Like most hardened outlaws, the Tierneys don’t take kindly to getting pushed out of their territory, and they put up a damned good fight. But Gideon won’t back down until he has them strung up from the gallows they once escaped…
This book explores how law can be understood through film by engaging creatively with the intellectual and aesthetic dimensions of both fields. Challenged to go beyond an instrumental analysis of a law "and" film, the contributors to this book instead consider instead the need to turn to film and what this means for how we come to understand law and its absences. The chapters explore a variety of narratives, aesthetics, cinematic epistemologies and legal phenomena; from assessing law in social debates to film as legal critique, from notions of justice to contemplations on evil, and from masculine vigilantism to radical feminism. Taken together, they constitute an inspiring body of work that embodies an urgency for diverse and subversive ways to challenge law’s formalism and authority; and to think about and respond variously to law’s impotence, its disappointment, or its boredom. This book will appeal to legal scholars and students in law and the humanities, especially those with interests in aesthetics, law and literature, law and culture, law and society, and critical legal theory.
When Robert B. Parker passed in early 2010, the world lost two great men: Parker himself, iconic American crime writer whose books have sold more than 6 million copies worldwide, and his best-known creation, Spenser. Parker's Spenser series not only influenced the work of countless of today's writers, but is also credited with reviving and forever changing the genre. In Pursuit of Spenser offers a look at Parker and to Spenser through the eyes of the writers he influenced. Editor Otto Penzler-- proprietor of one of the oldest and largest mystery specialist bookstores in the country, New York's The Mysterious Bookshop, and renowned mystery fiction editor whose credits include series editor for the Best American Crime Writing and Best American Mystery Stories, among many others (and about whom Parker himself once wrote, "Otto Penzler knows more about crime fiction than most people know about anything")-- collects some of today's bestselling mystery authors to discuss Parker, his characters, the series, and their impact on the world. From Hawk to Susan Silverman to Jesse Stone and Sunny Randall, from the series' Boston milieu to Parker's own take on his character, In Pursuit of Spenser pays tribute to Spenser, and Parker, with affection, humor, and a deep appreciation for what both have left behind.
On 14 May 1804, one Captain Meriwether Lewis and his companion William Clark led a thirty-three-man expedition to the new lands of Louisiana. 8,000 miles and two years later, after rafting up the Missouri and crossing the Rocky Mountains, they reached the far side of the world, the Pacific Ocean. Fredrick Nolan explores the first US settlers of the American West, including the remarkable stories of unsung heroes and heroines, the bloody battles between settlers and the native American inhabitants, the crimes committed by corrupt Sheriffs, and the occasions when citizens had to take the law into their own hands. This is the story of the men and women who answered the call of the West.
"This significant contribution to German history pioneers a conceptually sophisticated approach to German-German relations. Poiger has much to say about the construction of both gender norms and masculine and feminine identities, and she has valuable insights into the role that notions of race played in defining and reformulating those identities and prescriptive behaviors in the German context. The book will become a 'must read' for German historians."--Heide Fehrenbach, author of Cinema in Democratizing Germany "Poiger breaks new ground in this history of the postwar Germanies. The book will serve as a model for all future studies of comparative German-German history."--Robert G. Moeller, author of Protecting Motherhood "Jazz, Rock, and Rebels exemplifies the exciting work currently emerging out of transnational analyses. [A] well-written and well-argued study."--Priscilla Wald, author of Constituting Americans
