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329 reviews for:
American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst
Jeffrey Toobin
3.83 AVERAGE
329 reviews for:
American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst
Jeffrey Toobin
3.83 AVERAGE
LOVED this book. Very detailed and engaging to read. I'd only known the official story behind Patricia Hearst and this author did not hide the real story. Very interesting.
It's strengths are it's weaknesses. The narrative is highly detailed, with really vivid, evocative descriptions of characters, settings, and the slow unfolding of events. At points, this is really interesting and pushes the reader into the strange, specific chaos of this period. But it can also easily start to drag leaving the reader unsure of what the point is-- as for example in the detailed backstory of the Hearst family. This is a fascinating story full of contradictions, random chance, and vast diversity of American experience yet by trying to include as much as possible Toobin looses the chance to focus on a few particular details to make a compelling narrative arc, or a broader point.
I'm at a loss how to rate this. It was a book club pick so I felt compelled to finish. I don't think I would otherwise. It was well-written and researched, kudos to Toobin, I'm a huge fan. But I quickly lost empathy for pretty much everyone involved. Glad it's over. I did my job, and now I can pick up TJ Klune's latest as a reward :-)
4.5 stars - normally I struggle to read non-fiction, but this story, which I admittedly knew next to nothing about, read more like a crime thriller. And I can't even believe that these events happened and it ISN'T actually fiction. That said, the research Toobin did was incredible. He had anecdotes in there that put you right in the middle of this bizarre kidnapping/crime spree. Highly recommend.
Since seeing Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst in my Women & Political Violence class back in college, I've wanted to know more about this particular incident in history and Toobin's book is an exhaustive & thorough retelling of it. It also further solidified my belief that Patty wasn't necessarily brainwashed. Would she have become an urban guerrilla if she hadn't been kidnapped? Probably not but from Toobin's account, she was a blank slate just looking for something to attach herself to. Her fairly quick switch from fugitive in hiding to poised socialite is more proof of this.
The book I read right before this was "Black Against Empire" about the Black Panthers. That read like a scholarly journal - extremely interesting and informative - footnoted and referenced.
This book is like a long People Magazine article. Given the relative subject matter, that is the appropriate treatment. The SLA, including Hearst, are shallow, self-absorbed youth play acting as revolutionaries. They are the gang that couldn't shoot straight. The author makes the FBI, police, Hearst's family and everyone come across as inept and ineffectual. I lived in California at the time of the events and was curious about the details of the story. The book was interesting to read though the writing was sometimes annoying. At least three times Toobin writes that Patty had "lost a lot of weight but was still strong". He is very enamored of that kind of contrast. Whether Patty truly committed to the SLA or not is open to interpretation - I'm no psychologist.
I came away thinking she was just a very superficial person who wanted to rebel and went along with what seemed exciting but always had her own self interest at heart. She wasn't committed to anything.
This book is like a long People Magazine article. Given the relative subject matter, that is the appropriate treatment. The SLA, including Hearst, are shallow, self-absorbed youth play acting as revolutionaries. They are the gang that couldn't shoot straight. The author makes the FBI, police, Hearst's family and everyone come across as inept and ineffectual. I lived in California at the time of the events and was curious about the details of the story. The book was interesting to read though the writing was sometimes annoying. At least three times Toobin writes that Patty had "lost a lot of weight but was still strong". He is very enamored of that kind of contrast. Whether Patty truly committed to the SLA or not is open to interpretation - I'm no psychologist.
I came away thinking she was just a very superficial person who wanted to rebel and went along with what seemed exciting but always had her own self interest at heart. She wasn't committed to anything.
Exhaustive and meticulous and nothing less than I would have expected from Toobin. I learned a lot and found it to be a compelling examination of a case I knew only bits and pieces about prior.
Let me tell you the extent of my knowledge of Patty Hearst before I read this book.
I had heard her name and knew that she’d been kidnapped and that “Stockholm syndrome” was a part of the collective consciousness in part because of her. I don’t think I realized that she was a member of the publishing family—if you’d told me, I might have said, “Oh yeah, of course, that makes sense” but I don’t think I’d have been able to tell you that on my own.
And then a question about her came up at this year’s Quizzo Bowl, a large bar trivia championship in Philadelphia that my husband and his friends attend every year: What name had Patricia Hearst used when she was fighting alongside the revolutionaries that had kidnapped her? Our team stared at each other for a long moment. Seven out of the eight of us had been born in the early 80s and had no firsthand knowledge of the story. And then my husband, whose ability to retain obscure facts of all flavors is both absurd and legendary, said, “Maybe it was Tania?” With no other ideas and knowing any other idea would be just a guess, we went with it and were stunned when it turned out to be correct.
I remember asking Andrew the next morning how he knew the answer to that question and his response was that he had no idea. He knew about as much about the Hearst story as I did, but that name had stuck in his brain somehow. A few months later, I saw an announcement of this book and thought to myself that I should pick it up and actually learn a little something about the whole story.
That’s a really long explanation of why I picked up this book, but really it’s just this: I knew practically nothing about Patty Hearst and when my realization of that fact corresponded closely with the realization that there was a book coming out about the subject, I decided to put it on hold at the library. And what I found in this book is a completely and utterly fascinating tale that opened my eyes on a lot of different subjects (every time I learn a new fact about Ronald Reagan—who played a small role here; remember that I was too young to remember his presidency and we never got that far in American history classes—I dislike him just a little more).
Hearst was kidnapped by small group of far-left revolutionaries calling themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army, who come across here as sort of a ragtag group without a clear focus other than a general sense of “down with The Man.” Over the course of a few months, she began to appear sympathetic to their cause, releasing tapes that admonished her wealthy family and eventually joining the SLA in their criminal activities. Hearst had become separated, along with Bill and Emily Harris, through a series of mishaps before a firefight with the police killed the other SLA members. The three survivors sought help from other people they knew in the counterculture movement and hid out from the police for nearly a year before they were captured. In her trial, Patty Hearst’s lawyers argued that she had formed a traumatic bond with her kidnappers and had essentially been brainwashed into going along with them. Nevertheless, she was convicted and served 22 months in prison before her sentence was commuted by Jimmy Carter.
Jeffrey Toobin does a lot in this book. He lays out, briefly, the social stature of the Hearst family, as well as explaining why Patty’s father was not as wealthy as the SLA assumed. He explains what drove the various SLA members into the movement in the first place. He remains largely neutral in the face of the question Was Patty Hearst brainwashed or did she choose to become a criminal revolutionary? He acknowledges that there is no clear answer, pointing out that she had reason to go along if she believed it would save her life, that her psychological state was clearly in turmoil, but also pointing out that she was eventually given ample opportunity to walk away if she'd wanted to.
But what I gained most from this book is a greater understanding of the general mood of the country—and specifically the Bay area—in the 1970s. For those of us who grew up in the next decade, I think we associate counterculture with the 60s and the Summer of Love and all that. But many of us kind of forget how turbulent the 70s were. I knew Vietnam was still happening, I knew Nixon was a thing and that Watergate was for many the final straw in the public’s faith in government, I knew there was a gas crisis and inflation, but I still don’t think I ever really thought of the 70s as turbulent the way we’re taught that the 60s were. It’s particularly interesting to me to see a direct line between these events and Reagan’s rise, and the new frame this puts around modern conservatism for me (blech, I’m sorry, everything is going to be tied into this horrifying election somehow).
I’ve read some criticism that Toobin’s a little too hard on the SLA, too quick to dismiss them as bumbling dolts that no one took seriously, even among the revolutionary world, when that wasn’t necessarily the case. It’s sometimes hard to really comprehend why anyone would help these people, and Toobin perhaps could have shed some more light on that side of things. And then there’s the fact that Patty herself chose not to participate in the publication of this book, for reasons that aren’t exactly clear (maybe he’s gotten something wrong, maybe she’s just decided she doesn’t want to revisit this, who knows?) But overall, this was completely engrossing, the perfect read for anyone caught up in the current true-crime trend.
I had heard her name and knew that she’d been kidnapped and that “Stockholm syndrome” was a part of the collective consciousness in part because of her. I don’t think I realized that she was a member of the publishing family—if you’d told me, I might have said, “Oh yeah, of course, that makes sense” but I don’t think I’d have been able to tell you that on my own.
And then a question about her came up at this year’s Quizzo Bowl, a large bar trivia championship in Philadelphia that my husband and his friends attend every year: What name had Patricia Hearst used when she was fighting alongside the revolutionaries that had kidnapped her? Our team stared at each other for a long moment. Seven out of the eight of us had been born in the early 80s and had no firsthand knowledge of the story. And then my husband, whose ability to retain obscure facts of all flavors is both absurd and legendary, said, “Maybe it was Tania?” With no other ideas and knowing any other idea would be just a guess, we went with it and were stunned when it turned out to be correct.
I remember asking Andrew the next morning how he knew the answer to that question and his response was that he had no idea. He knew about as much about the Hearst story as I did, but that name had stuck in his brain somehow. A few months later, I saw an announcement of this book and thought to myself that I should pick it up and actually learn a little something about the whole story.
That’s a really long explanation of why I picked up this book, but really it’s just this: I knew practically nothing about Patty Hearst and when my realization of that fact corresponded closely with the realization that there was a book coming out about the subject, I decided to put it on hold at the library. And what I found in this book is a completely and utterly fascinating tale that opened my eyes on a lot of different subjects (every time I learn a new fact about Ronald Reagan—who played a small role here; remember that I was too young to remember his presidency and we never got that far in American history classes—I dislike him just a little more).
Hearst was kidnapped by small group of far-left revolutionaries calling themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army, who come across here as sort of a ragtag group without a clear focus other than a general sense of “down with The Man.” Over the course of a few months, she began to appear sympathetic to their cause, releasing tapes that admonished her wealthy family and eventually joining the SLA in their criminal activities. Hearst had become separated, along with Bill and Emily Harris, through a series of mishaps before a firefight with the police killed the other SLA members. The three survivors sought help from other people they knew in the counterculture movement and hid out from the police for nearly a year before they were captured. In her trial, Patty Hearst’s lawyers argued that she had formed a traumatic bond with her kidnappers and had essentially been brainwashed into going along with them. Nevertheless, she was convicted and served 22 months in prison before her sentence was commuted by Jimmy Carter.
Jeffrey Toobin does a lot in this book. He lays out, briefly, the social stature of the Hearst family, as well as explaining why Patty’s father was not as wealthy as the SLA assumed. He explains what drove the various SLA members into the movement in the first place. He remains largely neutral in the face of the question Was Patty Hearst brainwashed or did she choose to become a criminal revolutionary? He acknowledges that there is no clear answer, pointing out that she had reason to go along if she believed it would save her life, that her psychological state was clearly in turmoil, but also pointing out that she was eventually given ample opportunity to walk away if she'd wanted to.
But what I gained most from this book is a greater understanding of the general mood of the country—and specifically the Bay area—in the 1970s. For those of us who grew up in the next decade, I think we associate counterculture with the 60s and the Summer of Love and all that. But many of us kind of forget how turbulent the 70s were. I knew Vietnam was still happening, I knew Nixon was a thing and that Watergate was for many the final straw in the public’s faith in government, I knew there was a gas crisis and inflation, but I still don’t think I ever really thought of the 70s as turbulent the way we’re taught that the 60s were. It’s particularly interesting to me to see a direct line between these events and Reagan’s rise, and the new frame this puts around modern conservatism for me (blech, I’m sorry, everything is going to be tied into this horrifying election somehow).
I’ve read some criticism that Toobin’s a little too hard on the SLA, too quick to dismiss them as bumbling dolts that no one took seriously, even among the revolutionary world, when that wasn’t necessarily the case. It’s sometimes hard to really comprehend why anyone would help these people, and Toobin perhaps could have shed some more light on that side of things. And then there’s the fact that Patty herself chose not to participate in the publication of this book, for reasons that aren’t exactly clear (maybe he’s gotten something wrong, maybe she’s just decided she doesn’t want to revisit this, who knows?) But overall, this was completely engrossing, the perfect read for anyone caught up in the current true-crime trend.
Excellent book ~ it did take me a while to get into it though ~ slow start.
Thorough story with highlights from the 70s for context.
Thorough story with highlights from the 70s for context.