SOURCE: "True Crime Stories: Bad Guys, on Why They Did What They Did," in Washington Post, No. 225, July 17, 1996, p. C2.

[In the following review, Yardley remarks on Bad Guys, which gathers information on crime and criminals from interviews that Baker conducted with numerous convicted felons.]

Mark Baker correctly notes that ordinary Americans are at once horrified by and attracted to crime and those who commit it. On the one hand, "crime is one of the most talked about social issues in America today," with public fears exacerbated by "lurid images of crime" routinely presented on television, while on the other hand "Americans have always had an attraction to criminal behavior," and "our heroes are often loners, rebels, mavericks, romanticized outlaws."

As this suggests, our fears of crime and our infatuation with criminals have little connection with reality. We actually know almost nothing about crime as it is routinely...