The Tragedy of True Crime: Four Guilty Men and the Stories That Define Us

The Tragedy of True Crime: Four Guilty Men and the Stories That Define Us - Hardcover

$29.99
$29.99
Skip to product information
The Tragedy of True Crime: Four Guilty Men and the Stories That Define Us
  • The Tragedy of True Crime: Four Guilty Men and the Stories That Define Us
The Tragedy of True Crime: Four Guilty Men and the Stories That Define Us - Hardcover

The Tragedy of True Crime: Four Guilty Men and the Stories That Define Us - Hardcover

by John J. Lennon
$29.99
$29.99

Book Overview

A New York Times Notable Book of 2025 * An NPR Best Book of the Year * A Kirkus Best of 2025

In 2001, John J. Lennon killed a man on a Brooklyn Street. Now he's a journalist, working from behind bars, trying to make sense of it all.

The Tragedy of True Crime is a first-person journalistic account of the lives of four men who have killed, written by a man who has killed. Lennon entered the New York prison system with a sentence of 28 years to life but after he stepped into a writing workshop at Attica Correctional Facility, his whole life changed. Reporting from the cell block and the prison yard, Lennon challenges our obsession with true crime by telling the full life stories of men now serving time for the lives they took.

These men have completely different backgrounds -- Robert Chambers, a preppy Manhattanite turned true crime celebrity; Milton E. Jones, a seventeen-year-old coaxed from burglary into something far darker; and Michael Shane Hale, a gay man caught in a crime of passion -- and all are searching to find meaning and redemption behind bars. Lennon's reporting is intertwined with his own story, from a young man seduced by the infamous gangster culture of New York City to a celebrated prison journalist. The same desire echoes throughout the lives of these four men: to become more than murderers.

A first-of-its-kind book of immersive prison journalism, The Tragedy of True Crime poses fundamental questions about the stories we tell and who gets to tell them. What essential truth do we lose when we don't consider all that comes before an act of unthinkable violence? And what happens to the convicted after the cell gate locks?
ISBN9781250858245
Author John J. Lennon
PublisherCeladon Books
GenreBiography and Education
FormatHardcover
PublishedSeptember 2025
LanguageENG- English
Pages368
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Biography & Autobiography Nonfiction Social Science True Crime

1% fer Each of the Seven Seas

Every purchase sends 7% of our profits to The Ocean Cleanup. No fine print, no opt-in — just how we sail.

Whoever Ye Be, Welcome Aboard

Queer lit, music, art, philosophy, fiction — stories for every kind of soul. Come as ye are, matey.

More by John J. Lennon

The Tragedy of True Crime: Four Guilty Men and the Stories That Define Us

The Tragedy of True Crime: Four Guilty Men and the Stories That Define Us - Hardcover

The Tragedy of True Crime: Four Guilty Men and the Stories That Define Us - Hardcover

By John J. Lennon

About John J. Lennon

John J. Lennon is now serving his twenty-fourth year behind bars, currently in Sing Sing Correctional Facility. His writing has appeared in the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Esquire, and New York magazine. His work has been anthologized in the Best American Magazine Writing, and he's twice been a finalist for the National Magazine Award, in feature writing and reviews and criticism. His feature essay "The Apology Letter" was part of the Washington Post Magazine's special issue that won the National Magazine Award.

You may also like