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The “Wild West” gunfighter is such a stock figure in our popular culture that some dismiss it all as a corny myth, more a product of dime novels and B movies than a genuinely important American history. In fact, as Bryan Burrough shows us in his dazzling and fast-paced new book, there’s much more below the surface. For three decades at the end of the 1800s, a big swath of the American West was a crucible of change, with the highest murder rate per capita in American history. The reasons behind this boil down to one word: Texas.

In 2001, thieves parked a box truck in front of an aging tycoon’s factory, cut the phone lines, and used an overhead crane to lift out their prize: a 1938 Talbot-Lago T150-C SS Teardrop coupe—“the most beautiful car in the world” and one of only two in existence—then they disappeared into the night. The tycoon died. The trail went cold. End of story. Until it wasn’t.

In The Grave Robber, Tim Carpenter, former FBI Lead Investigator on the Art Crime Team, recounts one of the most extraordinary and unsettling cases in the history of art theft. Over the course of five decades, a lone graverobber accumulated an illicit trove of over 42,000 artifacts from cultures across the globe, including Native American, Haitian, Chinese, and others. The stolen items included nearly 500 ancestral remains, carefully looted from sacred burial sites and cultural heritage locations.

In the eighteenth century the first American medical school was established in Philadelphia. Following the model of European universities, anatomical lectures were conducted with cadavers. But where did the bodies come from? Dissection was viewed as a fate worse than death, and the only legal source of "stiffs" was executed criminals. But there were not enough. As the medical profession and its need for "anatomical material" grew, a new, macabre practice emerged: body snatching.

Shaun Attwood, former ecstasy kingpin in Arizona turned author and podcast-host, has gained a reputation for earning the trust of some of the world's most dangerous people, including gangsters, serial killers, and mafia enforcers. Drawing on his many hours of interview material, along with new content exclusive to the book, Shaun collates a collection of hard-hitting conversations with ten of the most dangerous murderers he's ever met.