Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Stories

Leonard Cassuto

Paper, 344 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-12691-5
$27.50 / £19.00

October, 2008
Cloth, 344 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-12690-8
$79.50 / £55.00

Leonard Cassuto's cultural history links the testosterone-saturated heroes of American crime stories to the sensitive women of the nineteenth-century sentimental novel. From classics like The Big Sleep and The Talented Mr. Ripley to neglected paperback gems, Cassuto chronicles the dialogue—centered on the power of sympathy—between these popular genres and the sweeping social changes of the twentieth century, ending with a surprising connection between today's serial killers and the domestic fictions of long ago.

Related Subjects

• American Literature
• Literary Criticism and Theory

About the Author

Leonard Cassuto is professor of English at Fordham University and an award-winning journalist whose writing has appeared in academic journals and popular periodicals ranging from The Wall Street Journal to Salon.com. He is the author of The Inhuman Race: The Racial Grotesque in American Literature and Culture and the general editor of the forthcoming Cambridge History of the American Novel.

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