{"title":"Kathleen A Cairns","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"proof-of-guilt-book-kathleen-a-cairns-9780803230095","title":"Proof of Guilt","description":"Barbara Graham might have been a diabolical dame in a hard-boiled detective story—beautiful, sexy, and deadly. Charged alongside two male friends in the murder of an elderly widow during a botched robbery attempt, “Bloody Babs” became the third woman executed in California—after a 1953 trial that played out before standing-room-only crowds captured the imaginations of journalists, filmmakers, and death penalty opponents. Why, Kathleen A. Cairns asks, of all the capital cases in the twentieth century, did Graham’s have such political resonance and staying power?  Leaving aside the question of guilt or innocence—debated to this day—Cairns examines how Graham’s case became a touchstone in the ongoing debate over capital punishment. While prosecutors positioned the accused woman as a femme fatale, the media came to offer a counternarrative for Graham’s life highlighting her abusive and lonely beginnings. Cairns shows how Graham’s case became crucial to the abolitionists of the time, who used instances of questionable guilt to raise awareness of the arbitrary and capricious nature of death penalty prosecutions. Critical in keeping capital punishment in the forefront of public consciousness until abolitionists homed in on a winning strategy, Graham's case illustrates the power of individual stories to shape wider perceptions and ultimately public policies.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49917743038737,"sku":"CIN0803230095G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51080970633489,"sku":"NIN9780803230095","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51283988971793,"sku":"CIN0803230095VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0803230095.jpg?v=1761389195"},{"product_id":"enigma-woman-book-kathleen-a-cairns-9780803211414","title":"The Enigma Woman","description":"“Crack shot.” “Enigma woman.” “Good with ponies and pistols.” “A much-married woman.” What if such an unconventional woman—and the press unanimously agreed that Nellie May Madison was indeed unconventional—were to get away with murder? Shortly after her husband’s bullet-riddled body was found in the couple’s Burbank apartment, police issued an all-points bulletin for the “beautiful, dark-haired widow.” The ensuing drama unfolded with all the twists and turns of a noir crime novel.    In this intriguing cultural history, Kathleen A. Cairns tells the tale of Nellie May Madison, the first woman on Death Row in California. Her story offers a glimpse into law and disorder in 1930s Los Angeles while bringing to life a remarkable character whose plight reflects on the status of women, the workings of the media and the judiciary system, and the stratification of society in her time. Cairns’s re-creation of the case from murder to trial to aftermath also casts an eye forward to our own love-hate affair with celebrity crimes and our abiding ambivalence about domestic violence as a defense for murder.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50360737792273,"sku":"CIN0803211414A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50367547703569,"sku":"CIN0803211414G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53460225589521,"sku":"CIN0803211414VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0803211414.jpg?v=1751043242"},{"product_id":"case-of-rose-bird-book-kathleen-a-cairns-9780803255753","title":"The Case of Rose Bird","description":"Rose Elizabeth Bird was forty years old when in 1977 Governor Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown chose her to become California’s first female supreme court chief justice. Appointed to a court with a stellar reputation for being the nation’s most progressive, Bird became a lightning rod for the opposition due to her liberalism, inexperience, and gender. Over the next decade, her name became a rallying cry as critics mounted a relentless effort to get her off the court. Bird survived three unsuccessful recall efforts, but her opponents eventually succeeded in bringing about her defeat in 1986, making her the first chief justice to be removed from the California Supreme Court.    The Case of Rose Bird provides a fascinating look at this important and complex woman and the political and cultural climate of California in the 1970s and 1980s. Seeking to uncover the identities and motivations of Bird’s vehement critics, Kathleen A. Cairns traces Bird’s meteoric rise and cataclysmic fall. Cairns considers the instrumental role that then-current gender dynamics played in Bird’s downfall, most visible in the tensions between second-wave feminism and the many Americans who felt that a “radical” feminist agenda might topple long-standing institutions and threaten “traditional” values.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51007351652625,"sku":"NIN9780803255753","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0803255756.jpg?v=1764162428"},{"product_id":"at-home-in-the-world-book-kathleen-a-cairns-9781496207470","title":"At Home in the World","description":"From the beginning of California’s statehood, adventurers, scientists, and writers reveled in its majestic landscape. Some were women, though few garnered attention or invitations to join the Sierra Club, the organization created in 1892 to preserve wilderness. Over the next sixty years the Sierra Club and other groups gained prestige and members—including an increasing number of women. But these organizations were not equipped to confront the massive growth of industry that overtook postwar California. This era needed a new approach, and it came from an unlikely source: white, middle-class housewives with no experience in politics. These women successfully battled smog, nuclear power plants, piles of garbage in the San Francisco Bay, and over-building in the Santa Monica Mountains.   In At Home in the World Cairns shows how women were at the center of a broader and more inclusive environmental movement that looked beyond wilderness to focus on people’s daily life. These women challenged the approach long promoted by establishment groups and laid the foundation for the modern environmental movement.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51030419144977,"sku":"NIN9781496207470","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51417144295697,"sku":"CIN1496207475G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1496207475.jpg?v=1761387378"},{"product_id":"front-page-women-journalists-1920-1950-book-kathleen-a-cairns-9780803222298","title":"Front-Page Women Journalists, 1920-1950","description":"Looks at the lives and careers of women who worked in the male-dominated profession of journalism. The author examines the roles women played in early-twentieth-century newspaper journalism and the influence they had on future generations of newspaperwomen through the examples of Agness Underwood, Charlotta Bass, and Ruth Finney.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52740128309521,"sku":"NIN9780803222298","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780803222298.jpg?v=1763481549"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-kathleen-a-cairns.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}