Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Cops and Bobbies

Subtitle: Police Authority in New York and London, 1830-1870

Author: Wilbur R. Miller

Narrator: Greg Nelson

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins

Language: English

Release date: 10-06-17

Publisher: University Press Audiobooks

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

First printed in 1977, Cops and Bobbies has become "one of the two or three consensus classics in the history of police", according to Roger Lane, author of Murder in America. In this second edition, Wilbur R. Miller provides a new preface in which he discusses how police historiography changed in the 20 years after the book's initial publication.

The book is published by The Ohio State University Press.

Critic Reviews:

"Miller has done his job lucidly and with great skill." (Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science)

Members Reviews:

Unreadable.

I'm from an academic background. I'm used to reading dry works. I've slogged through thousands of pages of poorly-written books and journal articles (many in hard science, where researchers, who aren't trained in writing, are barely able to string together a few coherent words at a time) by sheer willpower for various classes and papers. So when I say that this book is just painfully poorly written, trust me that it isn't because I didn't have the background for it, that it was over my head or too complex or written for an academic rather than a lay audience. I had to put it down after a few pages because life is too short. (Technically, I suppose I can only say that the first few pages are unreadably bad. Perhaps it gets better.)

Additionally, the set-up of the book, examining New York and London police development, feels forced. I started the book open to the idea, but attempt to make the case to link them is clumsy at best. It remains the story of two disparate elements.

I sincerely hope the author never reads this--I hate to be this mean--but if you have only a passing interest in this subject, if this isn't integral to your thesis or dissertation, don't read this book.

A helpful book on the history of U.S. and British policing

I feel as though the only other review here is a rather unfair representation of the book, as the previous reviewer claims to only have read the first few pages. While certainly not the most riveting book in the world (it is a history book), it does a fair job of achieving what it sets out to do: giving the historical backgrounds, similarities, and differences between the roots of the NYPD and the London Metropolitan Police. The previous reviewer said that this comparison seems forced; the comparison is actually a fitting one because the U.S. policing model, particularly starting with the NYPD, borrowed much from Sir Robert Peel's reformed London Metro Police. This is a good comparative study of the two and how different factors led to divergences in their development, in spite of the U.S. and U.K. being very similar societies.

While I don't mean to discredit the other reviewer, I feel that this book deserves a review with an alternative viewpoint. I read this book as part of my PhD studies in criminal justice (policing focus) and found it to be informative and quite helpful in understanding the development of two closely related national policing models.