Sons of Cain by Peter Vronsky
$1.99
Sons of Cain
- A History of Serial Killers from the Stone Age to the Present
- By: Peter Vronsky
- Narrated by: Mikael Naramore
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Categories: Biographies & Memoirs, True Crime
Publisher's Summary
From the author of Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters comes an in-depth examination of sexual serial killers throughout human history, how they evolved, and why we are drawn to their horrifying crimes.
Before the term was coined in 1981, there were no "serial killers." There were only "monsters" - killers society first understood as werewolves, vampires, ghouls and witches or, later, Hitchcockian psychos.
In Sons of Cain - a book that fills the gap between dry academic studies and sensationalized true crime - investigative historian Peter Vronsky examines our understanding of serial killing from its prehistoric anthropological evolutionary dimensions in the pre-civilization era (c. 15,000 BC) to today. Delving further back into human history and deeper into the human psyche than Serial Killers - Vronsky's 2004 book, which has been called "the definitive history of the phenomenon of serial murder" - he focuses strictly on sexual serial killers: thrill killers who engage in murder, rape, torture, cannibalism and necrophilia, as opposed to for-profit serial killers, including hit men, or "political" serial killers, like terrorists or genocidal murderers.
These sexual serial killers differ from all other serial killers in their motives and their foundations. They are uniquely human and - as popular culture has demonstrated - uniquely fascinating.
©2018 Peter Vronsky (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved
Louise
Great balance of case detail and analysis
I really enjoyed reading about cases beyond the USA and UK and the analysis of changes in patterns over time was very interesting, especially when exploring the potential generational effect leading to the “golden age” of serial killers. The section on Jack the Ripper is a terrific overview and the author’s analysis of the power of the media in influencing attention on some cases over others is really insightful.
Ken
it’s a hard listen, for all the right reasons.
man, there are some horrors lurking around in this book.
I often had to take breaks from it to recover from the cruelty man can commit on fellow man, and more often women.
it’s a great book though, just really ugly content matter.
for me, the worst was chapter 6 though. The witch hunt. absolutely horrifying. Mercifully, Christianity has evolved somewhat since then.