Lizzie Borden on Trial: Murder, Ethnicity, and Gender - Landmark Law Cases & American Society by Joseph A. Conforti (2015) Hardcover | True Crime Book, American Legal History, Women in Crime | Perfect for History Buffs & Law Students

Lizzie Borden owns a place in popular culture beside the likes of O.J. Simpson, Fatty Arbuckle, and Harry Thaw, the forgotten slayer of socialite-architect Stanford White. These cases stirred huge public fascination, and the media happily fed it. Close behind the press came authors and book publishers.As for Lizzie Borden, it would seem after a century and a quarter, so many books have been written that there would be nothing left to say.However this author has made an excellent addition to Lizzie-ana. First he is an accomplished historian of New England, and as such has made use of all available documents, as few of his predecessors were able or willing to do. Secondly, by describing the context of Yankee-vs-immigrant and the nascent women’s movement, he helps us understand what made Americans so absorbed with the case. The book also explains how in the world Lizzie got herself acquitted.The book is written for the general reader, with little academic jargon. If all you can remember is: “Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks; and when she saw what she had done she gave her father forty-one,” this one slim volume will satisfy your curiosity about who she was and what happened.