Michael Benson – författare

Although white-collar crime has caused a substantial amount of damage on both the individual and societal levels, it often ranks below street crime as a matter of public concern. Thus, white-collar crime remains an ambiguous and even controversial topic among academics, with a relative dearth of scholarly focus on the issue. The Oxford Handbook of White-Collar Crime offers a comprehensive treatment of the most up-to-date theories and research regarding white-collar crime. Contributors tackle a vast range of topics, including the impact of white-collar crime, the contexts in which white-collar crime occurs, current crime policies and debates, and examinations of the criminals themselves. The volume concludes with a set of essays that discuss potential responses for controlling white-collar crime, as well as promising new avenues for future research. Uniting conceptual theories, empirical research, and ethnographic data, the Handbook provides the first unified analytic framework on white-collar crime. Given the astronomical aggregate losses to victims, building a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics of white-collar crime is a topic of immediate social concern. The definitive resource on white-collar crime, this Handbook will be a valuable resource for developing both intellectual and policy-related solutions.

What grandstand collapsed during a game, killing twelve? How high is the Green monster in Fenway? In what park was the outfield fence only 187 feet from home plate?Ballparks of North America is a comprehensive encyclopedia of the grounds, yards and stadiums used for organized baseball from the invention of the sport in the 1840s to the year 1988. Entries, listed alphabetically by community, cover everything from cornfields to Yankee Stadium. Each entry gives the location of the park, who played there and when, home run dimensions, seating capacity, architectural comments, attendance records, and anecdotes. More than 100 photos and drawings are included, some rare.

The term 'white-collar crime' refers to crimes committed by people in respectable social and professional positions, who commit a crime in the course of doing their job or by using the advantage of their position. The crimes perpetrated are generally nonviolent, occur in commercial or business settings, and are intended solely to generate an illicit profit. ""White-Collar Crime"" explains the common types of crime committed, ranging from simple fraud to embezzling to insider trading, notes the famous cases, and discusses how law enforcement agencies identify and fight these crimes.The chapters include: History of White-Collar Crime; ABSCAM: How to Catch White-Collar Criminals; Crimes Against Consumers; Computer Crimes and I.D. Theft; and, Insider Trading and the Strange Case of Martha Stewart.

A breathtaking tour of the natural world is offered in Nanocosmos, a glorious examination of majestic topographies revealed by powerful scanning electron microscope (SEM) technologies.Nothing like Nanocosmos has ever been seen before. Benson has produced an exhilarating, aesthetically magnificent examination of complex microscopic worlds.The humbling beauty and cosmic immensity of our surrounding universe of planets, stars, and galaxies has inspired humanity since prehistoric times. But what about the vistas at the other end of the size-scale?The tiny worlds here, invisible to our unassisted eyes, are if anything more intricate, complex, and extraordinary than anything so far seen in deep space. Lauded artist and author Michael Benson’s sensational Nanocosmos corrects this oversight with an unprecedented examination of natural design at sub-millimeter scales.Constructed from SEM scans that he made over the course of six years at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Quebec, the images presented here reveal an eerie, awe-inspiring beauty in subjects taken from the natural world. These include radiolarians, dinoflagellates, and diatoms, as well as many varieties of insects, microscopic flowers, and even lunar samples from the Apollo program.The composite mosaic micrographs in Nanocosmos fuse art and science in revelatory ways, exposing an astonishing sublimity hidden to the naked eye.

The definitive story of the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey, acclaimed today as one of the greatest films ever made, and of director Stanley Kubrick and writer Arthur C. Clarke—“a tremendous explication of a tremendous film….Breathtaking” (The Washington Post).Fifty years ago a strikingly original film had its premiere. Still acclaimed as one of the most remarkable and important motion pictures ever made, 2001: A Space Odyssey depicted the first contacts between humanity and extraterrestrial intelligence. The movie was the product of a singular collaboration between Stanley Kubrick and science fiction visionary Arthur C. Clarke. Fresh off the success of his cold war satire Dr. Strangelove, Kubrick wanted to make the first truly first-rate science fiction film. Drawing from Clarke’s ideas and with one of the author’s short stories as the initial inspiration, their bold vision benefited from pioneering special effects that still look extraordinary today, even in an age of computer-generated images. In Space Odyssey, author, artist, and award-winning filmmaker Michael Benson “delivers expert inside stuff” (San Francisco Chronicle) from his extensive research of Kubrick’s and Clarke’s archives. He has had the cooperation of Kubrick’s widow, Christiane, and interviewed most of the key people still alive who worked on the film. Drawing also from other previously unpublished interviews, Space Odyssey provides a 360-degree view of the film from its genesis to its legacy, including many previously untold stories. And it features dozens of photos from the making of the film, most never previously published. “At last! The dense, intense, detailed, and authoritative saga of the making of the greatest motion picture I’ve ever seen…Michael Benson has done the Cosmos a great service” (Academy Award-winning actor Tom Hanks).

Today you’d call Ballantyne suburban, but back then, at the start of the summer of 1966, it was country — just a cluster of houses, some of them shacks, on or near Ballantyne Road, in the Town of Chili, NY. And while June 25 started like any other day it would end in a nightmare. In The Devil at Genesee Junction, veteran crime writer, Michael Benson, returns to his formerly rural hometown to take on the double homicide of his friends Kathy Bernhard and George-Ann Formiciola that took place that night. The two girls were missing for a month and then found in the bushes horribly mutilated. The double homicide changed the author’s childhood suddenly, and drastically. He went from living in a rural playland, to being encased in fear, wondering who among them was the werewolf who cut up Kathy and George-Ann. This heinous crime was never resolved, and didn’t go away. In recent years, the author has teamed up with a victim’s mom, and a local private investigator to delve deep into the 6/66 murders, developing along the way some strong new leads and shocking details. Together they have heated up this icy cold case, and their investigation has led them in a startling new direction.

This encyclopedic listing of every man who played on or coached the New York Knicks from the team's inception in 1946 to the present is jam-packed with details on everything from a player's careers statistics to his height, weight, and jersey number. Included is information about a player's life before and after the NBA, college career, and dates of birth and death. Relive the glory days of Bill Bradley, Walter "Cylde the Glide" Frazier, Patrick Ewing, Bob McAdoo, Dave DeBusschere, and all the other Knickerbockers in this comprehensive guide to Madison Square Garden's most famous denizens.

There is only one casino game in which a player, if he plays perfectly, can gain a mathematical advantage over the house. That game is blackjack. Blackjack Strategy teaches you everything you need to know to fatten your wallet and have a good time at the tables. At last, here is an easy-to-understand guide to blackjack's basic strategy and card counting. Michael Benson explains when to take a hit, when to stand, when to split, and when to double-down-and how all these decisions are influenced by the card count. Included are: a comprehensive list of blackjack rules, including those particular to specific casinos, regions, and foreign countries; how to avoid the surveillance techniques houses use to weed out card counters; inside tips from the professionals; a money management guide to maximize winnings and minimize losses; and 40 strategy charts. Blackjack Strategy is entirely up-to-date for today's casino play and, unlike many other blackjack guides, doesn't require a mathematician's skill to comprehend.

In Why the Grateful Dead Matter, veteran writer and lifelong Deadhead Michael Benson argues that the Grateful Dead are not simply a successful rock-and-roll band but a phenomenon central to American culture. He defends the proposition that the Grateful Dead are, in fact, a musical movement as transformative as any -ism in the artistic history of this century and the last. And a lot more fun than most. From the street festivals of Haight-Ashbury to the cross-country acid tests with the Merry Pranksters, and from the sound-and-light show at the Great Pyramid at Giza to the ecstatic outpouring of joy at Soldier Field in the summer of ’15, the Grateful Dead have been at the center of American life, music, and karmic flow for fifty years. In Why the Grateful Dead Matter, Michael Benson brings it all back to life and makes a compelling case for the band’s lasting cultural importance.

It was one of the biggest crime stories of the decade—two deadly killers, desperate and on the run. After months of planning, Ricky Matt and David Sweat cut, chopped, coerced, and connived their way out of a maximum-security prison in the wilderness of upstate New York and managed to elude police for three weeks, sending the region into lockdown and keeping the entire country on edge. The media called it “a bold escape for the ages,” and veteran true-crime writer Michael Benson leads us along the story’s every wild path to dig out a tale of adventure, psychology, sex, and brutality. Escape from Dannemora examines the strange case of Joyce Mitchell, the long-time prison employee who had a sexual relationship with at least one of the killers, and who smuggled them tools and aided in the escape, while they cooked up a plan to kill her husband. In the end, Benson looks closely at conditions at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, NY, a crumbling Gothic pile now under investigation for charges of drug trafficking and brutality.

The power of photography Storm is increasingly the default setting for our lives. It is as if the next environmental, medical, social or political calamity is mere moments away. Of course, Storm is the dramatic expression of nature's wild side, yet it is also the defining characteristic of our age. We are constantly reminded that the precious ecosystems of our fragile planet are under threat as never before. At the same time our social and political systems are fracturing - in the famously prophetic words of W.B. Yeats 'the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world'. Against all of this there are ripples of discontent that could still turn into a storm powerful enough to provoke the kinds of change necessary to save us all.