Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets

That has been on my to-read list since watching "The Wire" earlier this year. The minimal research I did into it before deciding I would (eventually) read it was definitely that Simon was (from accounts) given a lot of freedom. I'm glad to see it here - reminds me I should get around to actually reading it here sometime soon.

David Simon's "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets" http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18956.Homicide I wish it were required reading in at least all journalism school curriculums. It's a book about death and the most "exciting" part of police work but also one that reveals the banality and politically-motivated mechanics of such a system. I almost hesitate to call it "thought-provoking" because it, among other things, is just a great page-turner, though astonishingly completely non-fiction. I say "astonishingly" because Simon, according to him and the detectives he wrote about, had pretty much free reign to write what he wanted...there's no way such a book could be written today, as the police tactics that Simon describe, out of context, would likely cause a lot of outrage today. As a bonus, reading "Homicide" will make all of the jargon in "The Wire" much more understandable. Many of the memorable incidents in "The Wire", including the very first scene, and scenes like the photocopier-used-as-lie-detector, come straight from "Homicide"

Homicide is one of those books I wish I could read again for the first time. I can think of no higher praise.

The best book I've read in the last 5 years is David Simon's, "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets"...if you've watched The Wire, half of its material is derived from this real life account of being embedded in Baltimore's homicide unit: https://books.google.com/books/about/Homicide.html?id=N8LS0b... (https://books.google.com/books/about/Homicide.html?id=N8LS0b0_bvUC&hl=en) All of Atul Gawande's books, notably: The Checklist Manifesto [1]: http://atulgawande.com/book/the-checklist-manifesto/ Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance: http://atulgawande.com/book/better/ [1] You can read the essay that this book is based on in the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/10/the-checklist