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Powell's Staff: 12 Books to Add to Your 2022 Summer Reading List (1 comment)
Summer has finally found its way to Portland. The bright, blue days are perfect for grabbing a blanket, filling your picnic basket with goodies, and going to the park with a good book...
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American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst

by Jeffrey Toobin
American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst

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ISBN13: 9780385536714
ISBN10: 0385536712
Condition: Standard
DustJacket: Standard

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I thought I knew the story of Patty Hearst: heiress, kidnap victim, and possible terrorist. Toobin brings his excellent journalist's instinct to an old story and clearly illuminates a troubled time in American history that still has meaning in today's world. Deftly sifting through a mass of detail, Toobin tells an outrageous story peopled by a huge cast of larger-than-life characters. The reporting is balanced and insightful. This is an amazing, compelling read. To quote Warren Zevon, "Patty Hearst heard the burst of Roland's Thompson gun and bought it." Or did she? Recommended By Kathi K., Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

From New Yorker staff writer and bestselling author of The Nine and The Run of His Life: The People v. O. J. Simpson, the definitive account of the kidnapping and trial that defined an insane era in American history

On February 4, 1974, Patty Hearst, a sophomore in college and heiress to the Hearst family fortune, was kidnapped by a ragtag group of self-styled revolutionaries calling itself the Symbionese Liberation Army. The already sensational story took the first of many incredible twists on April 3, when the group released a tape of Patty saying she had joined the SLA and had adopted the nom de guerre "Tania." 

The weird turns of the tale are truly astonishing—the Hearst family trying to secure Patty’s release by feeding all the people of Oakland and San Francisco for free; the bank security cameras capturing "Tania" wielding a machine gun during a robbery; a cast of characters including everyone from Bill Walton to the Black Panthers to Ronald Reagan to F. Lee Bailey; the largest police shoot-out in American history; the first breaking news event to be broadcast live on television stations across the country; Patty’s year on the lam, running from authorities; and her circus-like trial, filled with theatrical courtroom confrontations and a dramatic last-minute reversal, after which the term "Stockholm syndrome" entered the lexicon.

The saga of Patty Hearst highlighted a decade in which America seemed to be suffering a collective nervous breakdown. Based on more than a hundred interviews and thousands of previously secret documents, American Heiress thrillingly recounts the craziness of the times (there were an average of 1,500 terrorist bombings a year in the early 1970s). Toobin portrays the lunacy of the half-baked radicals of the SLA and the toxic mix of sex, politics, and violence that swept up Patty Hearst and re-creates her melodramatic trial. American Heiress examines the life of a young woman who suffered an unimaginable trauma and then made the stunning decision to join her captors’ crusade.

Or did she?

Review

"[A] detailed but swiftly moving account of the 1974 kidnapping that mesmerized the nation....[T]he author's considerable legal knowledge propels the narrative....[A] a well-informed, engaging work from a highly capable author." Kirkus Reviews

Review

"In American Heiress, Toobin has crafted a book for the expert and the uninitiated alike, a smart page-turner that boasts a cache of never-before-published details. Throughout, Toobin’s book successfully captures the unrivaled spectacle of the Hearst drama." San Francisco Chronicle

Review

"Toobin...has written an outstandingly detailed and insightful account of the Hearst case and its impact." Booklist (Starred Review)

Review

"[A] clever companion piece to The Run of His Life (1996), his book about the O. J. Simpson case. Mr. Toobin has used the same winning formula of delving deeply into an American crime story that had tremendous notoriety in its day and retelling it with new resonance. Ms. Hearst’s tale is much more bizarre than Mr. Simpson’s....[I]n an age of terrorism, the chronicle of how a sedate heiress named Patricia morphed into a gun-toting, invective-spouting revolutionary calling herself Tania holds a definite fascination." Janet Maslin, The New York Times

Review

"[D]efinitive and nuanced....[Toobin's] thorough research, careful parsing of all the evidence, and superior prose make the book read like a summertime thriller." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

About the Author

Jeffrey Toobin is the bestselling author of The Oath, The Nine, Too Close to Call, A Vast Conspiracy, and The Run of His Life, which was made into the critically acclaimed FX series American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson. He is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the senior legal analyst at CNN.

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`
SeattleBookMama , August 17, 2016 (view all comments by SeattleBookMama)
Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction.Here Toobin presents us with what is likely the most objective and well researched account of the kidnapping and subsequent crime spree in which Hearst was a participant. Thanks go to Net Galley and Doubleday for the DRC, which I received in exchange for an honest review. This book was released digitally earlier this month and is available to the public now.In February of 1974 Patricia Hearst, favorite daughter of Randolph Hearst, the publishing magnate, was kidnapped from the Berkeley apartment she shared with her fiancee. The group that grabbed her called themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army, or SLA. But the story gets weirder still. The heiress had become bored with her boyfriend and was a terrible student; her future was looking lackluster, even depressing when the kidnapping took place. Within a few weeks, Hearst had joined her captors, brandishing an automatic weapon during a bank robbery, one of a number of crimes in which she participated. It set tongues to wagging from city, to suburb, to the hinterlands: was Hearst truly a convert, or was she just following orders to stay alive? Toobin, an independent journalist who's written for the New Yorker, has examined court documents and a host of other primary resources to ferret out the truth.This is a fast read, with plenty of dialogue. There are no slow spots.Full review is at Seattle Book Mama.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780385536714
Binding:
Hardcover
Publication date:
08/02/2016
Publisher:
Doubleday Books
Language:
English
Pages:
384
Height:
1.50IN
Width:
6.20IN
Author:
Jeffrey Toobin
Media Run Time:
B

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