Robert Elias

Book Readings
Upcoming Book Events!

I'll be appearing in the next few weeks at several venues to discuss, read, and sign my novel, The Deadly Tools of Ignorance. I would be very happy to see you at one of these events. To view all these events, click on Author Events/Book Readings, above right. The next two are:

Friday, November 18, 10-12 am: Friends of Chester Himes Society, WEST OAKLAND COMMUNITY CENTER
1724 Adeline Street
Oakland, CA 94607
510-238-7016


Monday, October 24, at 7:30 pm:
STINSON BEACH LIBRARY
3521 Shoreline Highway
Stinson Beach, CA 94970
415-868-0252

The Deadly Tools of Ignorance:
A Debs Kafka Mystery
Rounder Books

FINALIST: DARK OAK MYSTERY AWARD

"A stellar debut. Robert Elias is a fresh new voice in a crowded field. . . Elias has created a character worth rooting for in Debs Kafka. The writing is smooth and nuanced and the story is fresh and vivid. It makes you hope for a sequel--and soon."
- Sheldon Siegel, New York Times bestselling author of The Confession.

“A treat for fans of the All-American sport of murder—and for those who love baseball and witty academic skewering, too!”
- Gillian Roberts, Anthony Award winning author of the Amanda Pepper mystery series

“This captivating mystery is a grand slam!”
- Katherine V. Forrest, Lambda Award winning author of the Kate Delafield mystery series

“Move over, Troy Soos and Crabbe Evers -- a new baseball sleuth has taken the field!”
- Darryl Brock, Dave Moore Award winning author of If I Never Get Back, Havana Heat, and Two in the Field

“This is a thinking person's mystery . . ."
- Marlene Satter, Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine

The Deadly Tools of Ignorance asks the question: What if you had a dream you thought had passed you by, but then a murder gave you a second chance to pursue it?

For a literate, worldly Renaissance man, Debs Kafka sure has a lot of problems. His relationship with the exotic, intoxicating Nicole Vermeer is on the skids. He’s plagued with doubt about the academic path he’s chosen, though he’s only a thesis away from a PhD in criminology. His department chair has just been murdered. And he can’t stop thinking about baseball.

In Robert Elias’ cleverly constructed debut novel, the precarious world of graduate student, Debs Kafka, begins to unravel. Disillusioned, he sacrifices everything for a shot at his childhood dream: professional baseball. But he can’t shake his obsession with solving the murder of his former colleague-- controversial-but-beloved professor and priest, Tom Licente. Kafka turns frantic when he learns that the murderer is now threatening to kill his teammate, the star pitcher for the San Francisco Giants, in the final days of a tight pennant race.

The Deadly Tools of Ignorance follows the witty and feisty Kafka through the dysfunctional halls of academia, into the troubled Catholic Church, down the dizzying streets of San Francisco, and into the locker rooms of Major League Baseball. Can he fathom the chaos of these different worlds, find the culprit, and still salvage his own aspirations and stormy romance?

A riveting page-turner, The Deadly Tools of Ignorance is rich with exhilarating action and with subtle, philosophical observations about the nature of crime and its prevention. Linking the novel’s numerous strands is baseball – its lore, its culture, and its lessons for conflict, struggle, and resolution.

Imagine: “Good Will Hunting meets The Rookie on the Field of Dreams behind the Catholic Church.” Well maybe not all of that. But close.

"Field of Dreams"
Mystery Scene Spring #89

"People ask me where I could have possibly gotten the protagonist and story for my first novel, The Deadly Tools of Ignorance: A Debs Kafka Mystery. I haven’t the faintest idea. . . " (to see more, click on "Field of Dreams" above)

Baseball & the American Dream:
Race, Class, Gender & the American Dream
M.E. Sharpe, Publishers

Nominated for: Sporting News Best Book Award

"...a thought-provoking, multifaceted perspective on the state of the game and our collective national psyche"
- Elysian Fields Quarterly

One particular American sport arguably surpasses all others in reflecting U.S. society: the national pastime—baseball. Roger Angell has suggested that, “Baseball seems to have been invented solely for the purpose of explaining all other things in life.” It has uniquely mirrored the trends within our culture and has been associated with “The American Dream” in all its permutations. Baseball has been an arena in which the mightiest struggles of our society—equal rights regardless of race, nationality or gender—have been played out.

Robert Elias has woven together a collection of essays of exceptional diversity to look at how baseball and the American Dream have connected through history to the present day, as well as providing a signpost to the future of baseball in American popular culture. Featuring essays by former players such as Orlando Cepeda and Dusty Baker, legendary journalists such as Leonard Koppett, Andrei Codrescu, and Roger Kahn, and contemporary scholars such as Jules Tygiel, Gai Berlage, and Samuel Regalado, this volume provides a unique and valuable perspective on baseball and its distinctive place in American culture.

Victims Still: The Political Manipulation of Crime Victims
Sage Publications

"In Victims Still, Elias demonstrates again that he is a preeminent scholar in the field of victimology."
- Arthur J. Lirigio, Loyola University of Chicago

Official crime policy shifted its focus from crime and criminals to victimization and victims in the 1980s and early 1990s. As a result, crime victims were the subject of extensive new legislation addressing victim needs, rights, and services. But did these initiatives really help victims, or did they help further Reagan and Bush administration "law and order" policies for curbing offender and public rights in favor of increasing police power? And has such power escalated incidents like the Rodney King case in Los Angeles?

In this controversial and thought-provoking book, Robert Elias evaluates the effectiveness of the last decade's victim policy and argues that victims have been politically manipulated for official objectives. As a result, little victim support has occurred, and victimization keeps escalating. He reaches these conclusions from a thorough examination of victim legislation, get-tough crime policies, media crime coverage, the victim movement, and the wars on crime and drugs. Finally, he proposes solutions that could lead to substantially less crime. Students and professionals of criminology, victimology, policy studies, and political science will find Victims Still an exceptionally stimulating resource.

Rethinking Peace
Co-Edited with Jennifer Turpin
Lynne Rienner Publishers

"Timely, diverse, and controversial."
- Choice

With the development of the atomic bomb, Albert Einstein remarked that everything had changed except our thinking about the world. Einstein and Bertrand Russell warned us that, “we have to learn to think in a new way. . . Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall we renounce war?”

Unfortunately, we are facing the end of this century still in the midst of wars born of various motivations. In response, the editors of Rethinking Peace have compiled a collection of essays designed to encourage readers to think differently about the world and the prospects for peace. Based on rigorous scholarly work, these essays nevertheless have been written to be read by students and lay people—to make important points in a short space, and in plain English.

With an emphasis on new thinking and positive strategies for developing a more peaceful world, the authors explore why conventional politics and generations of peace movements have not quelled our fascination with militarism; how we got to where we are now; the kind of thinking that keeps leading us to war; and how we can fundamentally change our thinking so that a peaceful future is more than simply a pipedream.

The forty-five essays—fresh, timely, diverse and controversial—are sure to provoke meaningful discussion and debate.

The Politics of Victimization:
Victims, Victomology & Human Rights
Oxford University Press

“A pathbreaking study.”
- Richard Falk, Princeton University

The first comprehensive overview of victimology, The Politics of Victimization examines victimization as a reflection of the structure of American society. To understand victims and victimization, contends Robert Elias, one must look well beyond criminal justice to the much wider arenas of social, political and economic relations—in particular, to the relationship between victims and the American political economy. In this innovative study, Elias employs just such an interdisciplinary approach to investigating victimology and its boundaries. He also provides the first in-depth analysis of criminal justice and the roots of crime from the victim’s perspective, and develops a framework for a “new” victimology of human rights that embraces victims of both crime and repression. Setting victimization within a broader political context, Elias proposes a new definition of victimology that transcends current official and social perceptions of victimization and its sources. Since much crime arises in response to various forms of oppression, a society unconcerned with human rights violations and its victims can likewise provide little help for crime victims.

Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice
Taylor & Francis Publishers

"Peace Review is absolutely superb . . . "
- Johan Galtung

Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice is a quarterly, multidisciplinary, transnational journal of research and analysis, focusing on the current issues and controversies that underlie the promotion of a more peaceful world. Social progress requires, among other things, sustained intellectual work, which should be pragmatic as well as analytical. The results of that work should be ingrained into everyday culture and political discourse.

We define peace research very broadly to include peace, human rights, development, ecology, culture and related issues. The task of the journal is to present the results of this research and thinking in short, accessible and substantive essays. Each of our quarterly issues runs a series of essays organized around a theme. These are supplemented by several off-theme essays, a Peace Profile, and recommended books and videos.

The Peace Resource Book
Co-Edited with Randall Forsberg, et al.
Ballinger Books

"As a teacher, I would find myself utterly at sea without the help of this guide . . . well-organized and clearly written."
- Professor Harvey Cox, Harvard Divinity School

The Peace Resource Book provides a guide for activists, organizations, journalists, teachers, students--for everyone concerned about the arms race and efforts to reverse it. Featuring user's guides, figures, and original illustrations by William Harsh, the book provides all the basic information individuals need to teach, write, speak, organize, or simply learn about the issues of war and peace.

The Peace Issues and Strategies section surveys world military forces, arms control talks, and peace movement activities. It shows the distribution of military spending, and in a new survey of the goals, approaches, strategies, and tactics of the peace movement, it gives fresh insight into the myriad organizations.

The Directory of US Peace Groups section is the most comprehensive, up-to-date directory published on organizations concerned with peace, disarmament, and nonviolent conflict resolution. It covers 5,700 groups and includes a zipcode-ordered list of all groups and a complete alphabetical telephone list, detailed descriptions of the national groups and programs of study, each group's congressional district, and a list of members of Congress by state and district.

An all-new Guide to Peace-Related Literature section describes 1,000 items published in the last five years and a few classics. It spans the range from flyers to reference works for conferences, classes, talks, papers, or self-education. Each item has a short description plus price and ordering information. An address list of publishers and distributors and an author index are included.

The Peace Resource Book is a publication of the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies.

The Utopian Impulse
In a book printed for the Politics Department at the University of San Francisco, The Utopian Impulse examines utopian and dystopian thinking historically, but particularly to assess its relevance for the early twenty-first century.

The essays comprising the book are a collection of Honors Theses written by senior Politics majors. The articles examine issues as diverse as the U.S. Constitution, globalization, the Latino American experience, the Mafia, the Mondregon cooperatives, and the Hawaiian islands.

Victims of the System: Crime Victims & Compensation in American Politics & Criminal Justice
Transaction Books

Acclaimed as a breakthrough in victims rights, state compensation programs promised to pay victims for their losses as a result of crime.

But in this investigation of the New York and New Jersey plans, Robert Elias discovers that far less has been given to victims than what policymakers claimed. In his interviews with more than 250 victims of violent crimes, Elias learns that victim dissatisfaction remains high, even among those who qualified for the meager resources allocated to the compensation programs.

Elias argues that victim compensation provides an example of symbolic politics, designed to appease the public, without significant, tangible benefits. He recommends ways that victim compensation and other victim programs could provide victims with more tangible results.

"The Secret Life of Leon Trotsky"
Exquisite Corpse 5/6 (2000), 78-90

Reprinted in:
Nine: Journal of Baseball History & Social Policy Perspectives 10 (2001)

Don Malcolm (ed.), The 2001 Big Baseball Annual (Kirkwood, MO: Red Herring Press, 2001)


"When visiting Trotsky's former house in Mexico City . . . I couldn't recognize what was plain for me to see, so incongruous did it seem. But there it was: a crumpled old baseball pennant that read: 'Cleveland Indians.'" (to see more, click on "The Secret Life of Leon Trotsky" above)

American Democracy Debated
Co-Authored with Robert S. Friedman
General Learning Press

American Democracy Debated offers a unique approach to the study of the American political process. Through the debate format, this text introduces the student to the "nuts and bolts" of the American political system as well as to its controversies and conflicts. One useful attribute of a debate is that it provides an opportunity to understand that the citizenry--and usually the experts--seldom agree on a solution or approach to social and political problems. Many controversies are multifaceted and may be seen from many different points of view, while others arouse disputes on some portion of an issue.

American Democracy Debated offers a splendid challenge in teaching and learning about American government. With proper teaching, students are likely to develop greater skills in coping with the political system in their daily lives, as well as sharpening their skills in understanding the major issues that have divided individuals and groups for centuries.

Books in Progress
The Empire Strikes Out: How Baseball Has Influenced American Globalization and Foreign Policy, and Sold the American Dream Abroad
Compared to formal institutions of power, the cultural influences on U.S. foreign policy have been largely ignored. We might consider, for example, the role of the mass media, or the educational system. How have they been involved in shaping U.S. foreign policy? As vehicles for evaluating the wisdom of such policy? As cheerleaders for whatever policies our leaders concoct?
Those same questions could be raised about the influence of yet another central feature of American culture: professional sports which, according to Charles Springwood, provide the “symbolic expression of the values and beliefs of the broader society, thus strengthening the structure of the economic, political and cultural hegemony of dominant groups.”
But among the American sports, observers have long associated baseball with the essential features of the American national character. Baseball provides a revealing metaphor for American society, values and even policies. If baseball reflects American society at home, then what about American policy abroad?

Amsterdamned: A Debs Kafka Mystery
In the second book in the series, Kafka travels to Amsterdam to meet his girlfriend’s parents and explore Dutch crime policies, but instead he’s caught up investigating the murder of a whistleblower who was about to expose the role of child slavery in the African cacao trade. One man is dead, and another—a small chocolatier who’s struggling vainly to win an international chocolate competition--has been threatened for what he knows about the scandal. With the chocolatier’s life on the line, Kafka has to find the culprit before it’s too late. But the solution might rely on unearthing a centuries-old secret about the Catholic Church in Europe, and about one of it’s most controversial figures—the Dutch priest and humanist, [Desiderius] Erasmus.

Sold on Murder
An apparently mild-mannered auctioneer has finally had enough of the cell phone jerks he routinely encounters.

Legends of Baseball: Men & Women Who Made A Difference
Given baseball’s role in our history and culture, it’s not surprising that we constantly celebrate it as the national pastime. The existing baseball books have described what seems like every conceivable facet of the game, its evolution and its meaning. In particular, baseball books have been likely to emphasize baseball stars. While fewer in number, baseball photo collections are also compelling since we get to see our heroes in action. Yet these collections invariably describe players on the field and their playing skills. But if baseball were only a collection of outstanding plays and exemplary performances, it would merely be a game—one of many sports but not the national pastime. No, what makes baseball endure, and what makes it stand out from our other sports, is the way it transcends the playing field. Or, more precisely, it’s the way its players transcend the playing field. With this in mind, The Legacy of Baseball would feature the baseball men and women who have made the biggest difference both inside and outside the sport. The book's photos and narratives would not focus on the players on the field but rather on what else makes them important: their impact on the game, their qualities of character and leadership; and their impact on American culture either during or after their baseball careers.

Academic Essays
(Click for list)

Good Books
(Click for list)

Baseball Essays
(Click for list)