NYPD details episodes as fresh as the shootings of unarmed men that have triggered mass protests against Mayor Rudy Giuliani. It also tells of forgotten but no less compelling dramas such as the Becker-Rosenthal case, in which a police lieutenant went to the electric chair, and the death of Joe Petrosino, a New York City detective gunned down on the streets of Palermo, Sicily, after his cover was blown by the police commissioner.

James Lardner and Thomas Reppetto, who know the police world from the inside, throw today's headlines into vivid relief by taking us back more than 150 years through a succession of immigrant waves, long hot summers, and career-destroying crises and scandals. Fascinating as history, NYPD is also a telling look at the fears, the lore, the slang, the secrets, and the rituals of a chronically misunderstood profession.