case studies

Mystery. Manipulation. Murder. Cults are associated with all of these. But what really goes on inside them? More specifically, what goes on inside the minds of cult leaders and the people who join them? Based on the hit podcast Cults, this is essential reading for any true crime fan. Cults prey on the very attributes that make us human: our desire to belong; to find a deeper meaning in life; to live everyday with divine purpose. Their existence creates a sense that any one of us, at any time, could step off the cliffs edge and fall into that daunting abyss of manipulation and unhinged dedication to a misplaced cause.

Data-driven instruction is the philosophy that schools should focus on two simple questions: how do you know if are students learning? And when they are not, what do you do about it?.

It?s a signal paradox of our times that we live in an information society but do not know how it works. And without understanding how our information is stored, used, and protected, we are vulnerable to having it exploited. In Fancy Bear Goes Phishing, Scott J. Shapiro draws on his popular Yale University class about hacking to expose the secrets of the digital age. With lucidity and wit, he establishes that cybercrime has less to do with defective programming than with the faulty wiring of our psyches and society. And because hacking is a human-interest story, he tells the fascinating tales of perpetrators, including Robert Morris Jr., the graduate student who accidentally crashed the internet in the 1980s, and the Bulgarian ?Dark Avenger,? who invented the first mutating computer-virus engine. We also meet a sixteen-year-old from South Boston who took control of Paris Hilton?s cell phone, the Russian intelligence officers who sought to take control of a US election, and others. In telling their stories, Shapiro exposes the hackers? tool kits and gives fresh answers to vital questions: Why is the internet so vulnerable? What can we do in response? Combining the philosophical adventure of G?del, Escher, Bach with dramatic true-crime narrative, the result is a lively and original account of the future of hacking, espionage, and war, and of how to live in an era of cybercrime.

After 30 years, Detective Jim Scharf arrested a teenage couple's murderer--and exposed a looming battle between the pursuit of justice and the right to privacy. When Tanya Van Cuylenborg and Jay Cook were murdered during a trip to Seattle in the 1980s, detectives had few leads. The murder weapon was missing. No one witnessed any suspicious activity. And there was only a single handprint on the outside of the young couple's van. The detectives assumed Tanya and Jay were victims of a serial killer--but without any leads, the case seemed forever doomed. In deep-freeze, long-term storage, biological evidence from the crime scenes sat waiting. Meanwhile, California resident CeCe Moore began her lifetime fascination with genetic genealogy. As DNA testing companies rapidly grew in popularity, she discovered another use for the technology: solving crimes. When Detective Jim Scharf decided to send the cold case's decades-old DNA to Parabon NanoLabs, he hoped he would bring closure to the Van Cuylenborg and Cook families. He didn't know that he and Moore would make history. Anyone can submit a saliva sample to learn about their ancestry. But what happens after the results of these tests are uploaded to the internet? As lawyers, policymakers, and police officers fight over questions of consent and privacy, the implications of Scharf's case become ever clearer. Approximately 250,000 murders in the United States remain unsolved. We have the tools to catch many of these killers--but what is the cost?.

A collection of articles that examine the issue of the casualties of war.

A disturbing account of murder, paranoia, and disinformation explores modern-day survivalism and end-times extremism through the story of Lori Vallow and her grave digger-turned-doomsday novelist husband, Chad Daybell, who were responsible for unspeakable crimes.

Traces the history of World War I, focusing on how and why it became one of the bloodiest wars in human history and exploring how anti-war protestors were treated both in America and abroad.

"For nine years, South Carolina officials struggled to identify "the boy in the woods," a young man whose body had been discovered just south of Myrtle Beach in a fishing village called Murrells Inlet. Meanwhile, 1,200 miles away in Kansas City, Missouri, Frank McGonigle's family searched for him at Grateful Dead concerts and in the face of every long-haired hitchhiker they passed. Consumed by guilt for how they'd treated him, Frank's eight siblings slowly came to understand that--like Jerry Garcia sang--he's gone and nothin's gonna bring him back. Frank McGonigle was finally found--and identified as "the boy in the woods." Four years later, the case still unsolved, Jim Cosgrove, a McGonigle family friend and investigative journalist, picked up the trail of Frank's cold case and began uncovering connections to a ruthless local crime boss and blunders by the threadbare sheriff's department. When his research began to stall, a chance meeting with the soft-hearted, straight-talking "energy reader" Carol Williams provided a metaphysical spark that reignited Jim's resolve. Although his work as a journalist trained him to be skeptical, Cosgrove found himself starting to become a believer when Carol provided details about Frank's murder that turned out to be freakishly accurate. In 2019, Cosgrove returned to Murrells Inlet with one of Frank's brothers to dredge up some old leads and settle Frank's case once and for all"--Provided by publisher.

"Profiles the most notorious serial killers of the 1980s, including the Night Stalker, the BTK Killer, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Aileen Wuornos, revealing the facts about their crimes along with the advances in forensics that helped lead to their capture"--Provided by publisher.

"Framed around one salacious trial in 1891 London, a . . . true-crime narrative about the hunt for one of the first known serial killers, whose poisoning spree in the US, Canada, and England coincided with the birth of forensic science as well as the public's growing appetite for crime fiction such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novels"--Provided by publisher.