The body in the reservoir murder & sensationalism in the South - Trotti, Michael Ayers (University of North Carolina Press, 2008)
Includes bibliographical references (pages 217-294) and index
Acknowledgments; Introduction -- Discovering the Body; 1. The Origins of Virginia Crime Sensationalism; 2. Sensational Crime Comes of Age: The Cluverius Case of 1885; 3. The Disenchantment of Sensational Murder; 4. African American Sensations: Jim Crow Justice and the Richmond Planet; 5. Images of Murder: The Visual Revolution of the Halftone; 6. The Public Suspense Is Over; Epilogue -- Mass Culture's Search for Disorder; Notes; Index
This book covers mass media and the sensational crime. Centered on a series of dramatic murders in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Richmond, Virginia, "The Body in the Reservoir" uses these gripping stories of crime to explore the evolution of sensationalism in southern culture. In Richmond, as across the nation, the embrace of modernity was accompanied by the prodigious growth of mass culture and its accelerating interest in lurid stories of crime and bloodshed