Travels with Doctor Death by Ron Rosenbaum

Travels with Doctor Death Reviews

• 
  Erik Graff

  I picked this off the shelves at Heirloom Books in Chicago because some of the essays described on the back cover were about topics of interest such as Hitler's possibly Jewish ancestry, Lee Harvey Oswald's character, the death of JFK's mistress, Skull and Bones et cetera. And, yes, indeed they were interesting, author Rosenbaum having done his home- and legwork on these and other, herein unmentioned, topics. Further, he writes with a fine sense of irony and appreciation of uncertainty and ambiguity. One is informed, entertained, amused--and, most indicative of his mastery of the craft, one forgets one is reading at all.
• 
  Katherine Addison

  I first encountered Ron Rosenbaum with his excellent book
  Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil, which is a collection of investigative journalism essays about all the theories people have about what made Hitler into what he was (and in fact the last essay in this book bridges the two collections). This collection is not themed in the same way; it's just a bunch of essays Rosenbaum wrote in the '70s and '80s about a whole host of crazy things: JFK assassination conspiracy theorists, Watergate conspiracy theorists, the BATFUCK NUTS things the CIA was doing in the '80s, the cancer clinics of Tijuana, the phone phreaks, the extremely uncomfortable and awkward questions raised by nuclear deterrence theory, and some splendid true crime essays: the unsolved murder of
  Mary Pinchot Meyer (who was, among many other things, one of JFK's mistresses); a drug dealer's murder in Brooklyn; the very strange death of David Whiting; and the title essay, which is about
  Dr. James Grigson. Grigson was an expert witness Texas prosecutors called in basically on behalf of the death penalty. Grigson's schtick was pronouncing the defendant an incurable sociopath, guaranteed to kill again, based on nothing but the prosecutor's "hypothetical" reconstruction of the crime (in a Kafka-esque catch-22, the Supreme Court had judged it unconstitutional for Grigson to examine the defendant himself, because that violated the defendant's 5th Amendment rights). Grigson was a terror on cross-examination and he knew exactly how to get juries to believe him. A particularly perceptive defense attorney told Rosenbaum, "If you ask me, he's the sociopath [...] He's the one who, despite reprimands, goes around making pronouncements which have been condemned by his profession. He's the one who does it over and over again with no remorse [...] Just like a sociopath" (234). And Grigson tells Rosenbaum about the defendant he does get to examine,
  Gayland Bradford:
  

  "And as I was leaving he pointed his finger at me and said, 'You're slick.'"
  
  "You're slick?"
  
  "Yeah, it was 'Hey, man, you're slick.' It's the sociopath's compliment. It's the recognition of the sociopath for somebody who appreciates what he really is."
  (233)

  
  Grigson doesn't quite say, "it's the recognition of the sociopath for another sociopath," but that isn't very far beneath the surface of his grammatically convoluted explanation.
  
  (I notice that, while Rosenbaum doesn't mention all the testimony of future dangerousness listed by the site I found Gayland Bradford on (which, as it happens, is the Clark County Indiana prosecutor's website, which lists all the times the death penalty has been carried out since 1976 because, apparently, there haven't been enough of them), the Clark County website doesn't mention the testimony of Dr. Grigson. Further note, because irony is good for you, Bradford wasn't put to death until 2011--twenty-three years after he murdered Brian Williams, twenty-one years after he was sentenced to death, and seven years after Grigson died of lung cancer.)
  
  It's probably hyperbole to say that Grigson was a sociopath--but is it more hyperbolic than Grigson's own on-the-spot "hypothetical" diagnoses of incurable sociopathy?
  
  At this point, this collection is something of a historical artifact, but Rosenbaum is a smart, thoughtful, engaging writer, and beneath the dated topicality, what he's writing about is the weird, dark, twisted side of human nature, and that, my friends, is still extremely damn relevant.
• 
  Sean

  A very interesting book that deals with psychiatrists and those who he deals with that are murderers. Predictive items such as this dr deals with makes it very hard as it almost that he doesn't do things correctly. Not generally meeting with them shows a lack of understanding of the human psyche to me. You can't diagnose without meeting someone.
• 
  Bill

  It's amazing the sorts of books you can find, if you look hard enough, at the dollar store. I bought this back in college, and it's one that I dig out every couple of years to re-read. Great investigative journalism into some of the stranger news stories around. Conspiracy buffs would do well to read it.
• 
  Kelley

  I really tried to actually finish this one. So many good things are said about Rosenbaum that I was actually excited to pick this on up. But I couldn't even get 1/2 way through... and I've finished a lot of books I hated just out of principle.
  Don't bother with this one unless you've read him before and know you like his work, subject matter and writing style.
• 
  Phil Overeem

  I believe I've already read several of the pieces herein, but Rosenbaum's my favorite investigative journalist. Dogged, idiosyncratic, relentlessly questioning, and often quite funny, he's been kind of quiet lately, but no one does quite what he does.
• 
  Simon

  Fascinating piece about the Texas death penalty sentencing phase. A psychiatrist nicked named doctor death testifies for the prosecution whether he believes if someone deserves to be put to death. Basically, if the criminal will commit another murder/be violent
• 
  Bird

  Eh, OK. A tabloid approach to some interesting subjects like JFK and the title character, a physician who argues for the prosecution in death penalty cases.
• 
  Stuart

  Quality is a bit uneven, but a few of these essays are top-notch, especially the title story and a wonderful piece about USAF missile launch officers.
• 
  Kate

  Interesting but outdated.
• 
  Brian

  I found this in a random used-book shop in London. I loved it, as Rosenbaum focuses on so many interesting and leftfield subjects--conspiracy, paranoia and espionage, to name a few.
• 
  Lara Arend

  Rosenbaum bummbles, trying to fit his square liberalism in the round hole of world events. It would be pitiable if he weren't so arrogant.
• 
  Dan

  Acquired Nov 20, 1999
  City Lights Book Shop, London, Ontario
• 
  Kathy Gruwell

  Biased