NYPD A City and Its Police [Paperback]

NYPD details episodes as fresh as the shootings of unarmed men that have triggered mass protests against Mayor Rudy Giuliani. It also tells of forgotten but no less compelling dramas such as the Becker-Rosenthal case, in which a police lieutenant went to the electric chair, and the death of Joe Petrosino, a New York City detective gunned down on the streets of Palermo, Sicily, after his cover was blown by the police commissioner.

James Lardner and Thomas Reppetto, who know the police world from the inside, throw today's headlines into vivid relief by taking us back more than 150 years through a succession of immigrant waves, long hot summers, and career-destroying crises and scandals. Fascinating as history, NYPD is also a telling look at the fears, the lore, the slang, the secrets, and the rituals of a chronically misunderstood profession.

James Lardner, a writer forThe New YorkerandThe Atlantic Monthly, is the author ofCrusader: The Hell-Raising Police Career of Detective David Durk.

Thomas Reppettois a former Chicago commander of detectives and has been the president of New York City's Citizens Crime Commission for twenty years.

A fascinating ride-along with the largest and most influential police force in the country. The Wall Street Journal

Entertaining and witty. John Timoney, The New York Observer

NYPD is both enlightening and entertaining. It should be required reading. Alan Lupo, The Boston Globe

Neither indictment nor apologia, but bona fide history, thoroughly researched and engagingly written. Business Week