Crimes That Changed Our World

Tragedy, Outrage, and Reform

By: Paul H. Robinson, Sarah M. Robinson

Narrated by: Paul Heitsch

Crimes That Changed Our World explores some of the most important trigger cases of the past century, revealing much about how change comes to our modern world. The exact nature of the crime-outrage-reform dynamic can take many forms, and Paul and Sarah Robinson explore those differences in the cases they present.

Each case is in some ways unique but there are repeating patterns that can offer important insights about what produces change and how in the future we might best manage it. Sometimes reform comes as a society wrestles with a new and intolerable problem. Sometimes it comes because an old problem from which we have long suffered suddenly has an apparent solution provided by technology or some other social or economic advance. Or, sometimes the engine of reform kicks into gear simply because we decide as a society that we are no longer willing to tolerate a long-standing problem and are now willing to do something about it.

As the amazing and often touching stories that the Robinsons present make clear, the path of progress is not just a long series of course corrections; sometimes, it is a quick turn or an unexpected lurch. In a flash, we can suddenly feel different about present circumstances, seeing a need for change and can often, just as suddenly, do something about it.

©2018 Rowman & Littlefield (P)2018 Tantor

Intense and Informative!

A good book, which details specific crimes and how they influenced the changing of laws and people’s attitudes towards crimes.

The writer is excellent, informative and fun.
The narrator is, unfortunately a bit monotonous and so parts of this book drag on.
However! This is the sort of book that is best read in small doses and digested slowly. Done this way, the narrator is not that troublesome.

Good story, Bad reader.

The reader was really annoying. He had weird pauses and emphasis throughout. The subject was interesting, but a lot of the meaning was lost because of the reader's strange inflections. I recommend reading this yourself instead of the audiobook.