Panic:

Panic: the Bloodlands series by: Harold Schechter
Non-fiction: History, E-book
E-book Count:21
Book Count:30

This book in the series is on a moral panic that took place in the 1930's.  It notes that a moral panic is a form of mass hysteria where a group of similar crimes and sensational reporting causes people to be disproportionately scared of a crime.   It goes over a handful of cases that spread the moral panic of the day, that there was a rash of pedophile murderers, including one case where a distraught father killed his daughters to protect them.  It then also goes over the statistics of  crimes of the time, showing that in a number of the cities the amount of violent crimes against children went down.  Also that this panic ended as soon as the bigger issue of WWII started.