The show of violence

F. Wertham

Accompanied by a prologue and an epilogue dealing tersely with the story of Cain which serves as a text, here are nine high-powered chapters by a psychiatrist who has been in the very center of the firing line in contested issues of murder cases he dramatically portrays. The book presents a collection of hard-boiled facts put together in virile, compelling, often ironic prose, which becomes a little shrill only in its generalized denunciations. Exhibiting sound scholarship the author likens the situations in certain of his cases to the essence of some Greek tragedies, Medea, Orestes, as well as Oedipus. Then the complex of Herostratus, who followed his urge to make himself famous by a terrible crime, is enunciated and a wealth of apt quotations from great writers illuminates many a point on many a page. Dr. Fredric Wertham (1895-1981) was a German-American psychiatrist and crusading author who protested the purportedly harmful effects of mass media, comic books in particular, on the development of children.