For many people, celebrity mugshots are the ultimate guilty pleasure, but for Italian writer Giacomo Papi, they’re history. His latest offering, Booked, is a collection of mug shots used to explain the last 150 years of history.

Like the medium of photography itself, the book is a collection of brief, isolated incidents that Papi tries to tie together into a cohesive whole. In some places he succeeds, such as the long string of famous assassins’ photographs, but sometimes the connection is tenuous, like when he editorializes about Michael Jackson or moves from concentration camp prisoners to Roger Clinton, the former President’s brother.

But even more interesting than all of the celebrities, terrorists, murderers, revolutionaries and world leaders that populate the pages are the anonymous shots that are listed under such nondescript headings as “Dominatrix” or “Transvestite.” There is an eerie surrealism associated with these pictures — it’s hard to believe any of these people actually existed. In that way, the proof inherent in photographs is Papi’s greatest asset.

People will always have a fascination with crime, and perhaps even more so with the people who commit crime. This book makes an attempt to legitimize that obsession and put it to use. Whether or not Papi succeeds is up to the reader, but in either case, Booked is still an interesting read.