What Are
Kellermann's Kollectionns of Trial Books?
Last Updated 10/17/97

What in the world are "Kellermann's Kollectionns"?

"Kellermann's Kollectionns" are organized bibliographies including scholarly, trade, and mass market books about specific courtroom trials and the trial process.

The kollectionns expand constantly as additional books are listed and new issues and trials are covered. Citations, corrections, suggestions, and comments are always welcome; just email kellerma@alishaw.ucsb.edu.

So what "kollectionns" are there?

Kellermann's Kollectionns of Trial Books are organized into two primary (rather out of control!) kollectionns: (1) Kellermann's Kollectionns of (In)-Famous and Celebrity Trials and (2) Kellermann's Kollectionns of Helpful Trial Background Books.

"Kellermann's Kollectionns of (In-)Famous and Celebrity Trials" catalogs books, videotapes, audiotapes, and similar material about individual trials, particularly trials of the rich, famous, and heinous.

"Kellermann's Kollectionns of Helpful Trial Background Books" catalogs books, videotapes, audiotapes, and similar material about the process and practice of trials, focusing especially on topics related to communication, advocacy, people, social and public issues, and justice.

So what's in these "kollectionns" anyway?

The "(In-)Famous and Celebrity Trial" kollectionns provide scholarly, trade, mass, and sometimes even lurid reference entrees into the travails, tribulations, and trials of Rodney King, O.J. Simpson, Randy Weaver, David Koresh, Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber, Patricia Hearst, Jean Harris, Susan Smith, JonBenet Ramsey, Joe Hunt, Eric & Lyle Menendez, the McMartin preschool, Jim Bakker (PTL Club), Allan Bakke, Sam Sheppard, Claus von Bulow, Bernhard Goetz, Mike Tyson, Jeffrey MacDonald, and Jeffrey Dahmer, among others.

The "Helpful Trial Background" kollectionns name, explain, scrutinize, analyze, deduce, and conclude scholarly, trade, mass, armchair and sometimes even factual information about trial advocacy, juries, communication, language, and media; openings, closings, questioning, witnesses, and testifying; attorneys, defendants, judges, police, and forensics; race, gender, domestic violence, and extremism; and legal reform, victim's rights, and the practice of law.

Why do you call these bibliographies "Kellermann's Kollectionns"?

John Farley, a professor of physics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, gave my first O.J. Simpson bibliography the name "Kellermann's Kollection". As you've probably figured out by now, my last name is Kellermann. My first name is Kathy. My symmetrical self, psychologically distressed and having a breakdown, decided it just had to spell kollectionn with two nn's. After an incredible amount of time and effort, a minor keystroke provided initial kollectionn the company it so badly had been wanting. Hence, Kellermann's Kollectionns. Not a gripping story, but at least a true one.

Why are you doing this?

I am a university professor. I was sick and mostly bedridden when O.J. flew the coop, going faster up the 405 at 40 m.p.h. than is normal during rush hour. (Of course, it helps to have a police escort.) Having nothing better to do, not being able easily to read, and not at all loath to admitting actually being intrigued, I gave myself "permission" (as if I had a choice!) to get addicted to O.J. TV.

Admittedly, I've always been addicted to matters legal. I study communication, specifically, persuasion, argumentation, and interpersonal interaction. I've looked at how people interrogate, evade, equivocate, retreat, attack, and avoid. Is it any wonder I became addicted to the O.J. case? What better way to pass the time than to watch people doing live what I normally have to cajole and coax participants to do in my research?

Seriously, the O.J. case was a perfect beginning -- no lack of books on the topic, no lack of just about anything on it. My addiction propelled me forward. When I could no longer remember which O.J. trial books I owned, had ordered, or had heard of, I started a list to stop me from buying books for the third time.

And from there it just grew. Pretty soon I felt compelled to have a complete list of O.J. trial books. And then the books with chapters or sections related to the O.J. trial were published. And then those darn masters' theses and doctoral dissertations, scholarly symposia, convention paper presentations, and journal articles appeared. And that didn't even begin to cover what had been in trade and other mass market publications, tabloids, and chain letters and cascading over the internet.

Always needing closure (hah! not yet even do I have that on the O.J. trial!), I forged ahead and expanded and expanded and expanded my O.J. list. And when the O.J. trial ended, my new project had already begun, for I had already "acquired" an interest in the next rich, famous, and heinous case.

Not being a strictly linear person, I "managed" to acquire interests in golden oldies as well as newsy newbies. And my friends didn't help matters any either: they kept asking questions of me as if I were the resident "expert" on (in-)famous and celebrity trials, whether I knew anything about them or not. So as not to disappoint them (!!), I sought knowledge from the tree of life: books, books, and more books; newspapers, newspapers, and more newspapers; and, TV, TV, and more TV.

Thank God for CourtTV. Thank God for the Internet news feed. Thank God for making me a trial junkie.

What do you get out of doing this?

Now that one I haven't figured out. No fame, no glory yet. CourtTV did once ask for the most recent update of the O.J. list. The outlook for bookstores locally, regionally, and nationally improved dramatically as I began buying and reading the books on the list. I have "met" a person I've never seen, conversed with a person I've never heard, and found another addicted soul in the person of John Farley, professor of physics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas who so kindly initially named and now still mounts and provides these kollectionns. I've moved from not knowing how to spell HTML to being able to program in it directly. I've managed to amuse myself. That's good enough, after all, isn't it?

Can I use this material?

Absolutely. My intent was to addict others, but I also want to locate other addicts. Plus, the "outreach" potential of educating people about the law appeals to me. I developed the kollectionns on the nature, issues, people, events, and aspects of trials as part and parcel of my own interests in studying persuasion, argumentation, and interpersonal interaction in a "real-world" setting (well, at least it is its own real world!). I only ask that you credit John Farley for providing the web site and taking the time to mount all the files and myself (Kathy Kellermann) for compiling and maintaining the kollectionns, and provide the kollectionns' web site address, http://www.physics.unlv.edu/~farley/humor/K/index.htm, OR at http://alishaw.ucsb.edu/~kellerma/k/index.htm so that if others want to visit they might.

Thank you for your time. Cheers. Play around in the kollectionns. Enjoy. Send me citations, corrections, suggestions, comments and questions as you wish and have the time; my "signature" is affixed at the bottom of the page. I will add, fix, undertake, consider, and answer as fitting and I have anything to say.