Jay Robert Nash is an American author of more than 70 books on myriad aspects of true crime. Among Nash's crime anthologies are Encyclopedia of Western Lawmen and Outlaws, Look For the Woman, Bloodletters and Badmen, and The Great Pictorial History of World Crime. He has also compiled his exhaustive research of criminal behaviour into a CD-ROM entitled Jay Robert Nash's True Crime Database.
Biography
Jay Robert Nash currently lives in Wilmette, Illinois and describes himself as an "entrepreneurial businessman". Nash has won Best Reference citations from the American Library Association for four of his books, including Darkest Hours. However, he has said that his books are "seeded with information to detect any unauthorized use or duplication"; the precise nature of these copyright traps may include incorrect information in otherwise factual entries, or wholly fictitious entries. Sally G. Waters, writing for the Library Journal, called Nash's work "fascinating yet flawed" and recommended that it be used only for background research, verifying the information based on the sources in Nash's bibliography. In the Journal of American History, Richard Maxwell Brown also noted the "numerous errors, omissions, inconsistencies, and anomalies" in Nash's encyclopedias. In 2008, The Library of America selected Nash's story "The Turner-Stompanato Affair" for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime.
Nash once filed a lawsuit against CBS for producing an episode of Simon & Simon with a plotline based around his notion that bank robberJohn Dillinger was not killed by the FBI in 1934. His claim of copyright infringement was dismissed on summary judgment, a ruling upheld by an appeals court. The court compared Nash's writing to "speculative works representing themselves as fact" and concluded that he could not claim a copyright on his analysis of historical facts, only his expression of them. The court added that Nash should not be surprised at the result, pointing out, "His own books are largely fresh expositions of facts looked up in other people's books."
Selected bibliography
Hustlers and Con Men: An Anecdotal History of the Confidence Man and His Games published by M. Evans & Company
Darkest Hours: A Narrative Encyclopedia of Worldwide Disasters from Ancient Times to the Present published by Pocket Books.
Among the Missing: An Anecdoctal History of Missing Persons from 1800 to the Present, Rowman and Littlefield.
Ballistics
Look for the Woman: A Narrative Encyclopedia of Female Poisoners, Kidnappers, Thieves, Extortionists, Terrorists, Swindlers and Spies from Elizabethan Times to the Present published by M. Evans & Company.
The Mafia Diaries published by Dell Publishing Company
Bloodletters and Bad Men: Lucky Luciano to Charles Manson; A Who's Who of Vile Men Wanted For Every Crime in the Book published by M. Evans and Company, Inc., revised and updated edition.
