RESEARCH INTERESTS: Research interests include comparative police history; the state and federal policing; representations of crime and criminal justice in popular literature. In general I am interested in the theme of Authority in America -- what makes our institutions and practices of political authority both similar to and different from those of other nations?
SCHOLARLY WORKS: Cops and Bobbies: Police Authority in New York City and London 1830-1870 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 2nd ed. Ohio State University Press, 1995. Revenuers and Moonshiners: Enforcing Federal Liquor Law in the Mountain South, 1865-1900 (Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 1991).