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book_concierge's review against another edition
4.0
Digital audio book narrated by Mozhan Marno and Scott Brick
Subtitle: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town. Krakauer explores the issue of acquaintance rape (sometimes called “date rape”). While every young woman is warned about strangers, the dangers of being out alone at night, and being alert to her surroundings, crime statistics show that most rapists are NOT men in ski-masks hiding in dark alleys. In fact, many more sexual assaults take place between acquaintances. That young man you’ve known through work or school is much more likely to assault you than a total stranger is.
He focuses on one college town, and a couple of star football players, and the women who were their victims. The events he details began in 2010 and he follows the cases through about 2014, exploring how the assaults affected the rapists, the detectives, the women victims, their friends and families. It is at times a very disturbing book. But it is one that more people should read. This topic SHOULD make us uncomfortable, we should be enraged at the way in which the justice systems treats these women, and at the way in which the universities (and their all-important big-donor alumni) dismiss the women’s stories in favor of supporting the athletes.
Krakauer chose this particular state-run Montana university and the football players involved. But this story could just as easily have been based at a private college in the East, or featured rapists who were not star athletes.
The audio version is jointly narrated by Mozhan Marno and Scott Brick. Marno does most of the book, with Brick voicing the forward and the final chapter where Krakauer writes in first person. They do an exceptionally good job.
Subtitle: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town. Krakauer explores the issue of acquaintance rape (sometimes called “date rape”). While every young woman is warned about strangers, the dangers of being out alone at night, and being alert to her surroundings, crime statistics show that most rapists are NOT men in ski-masks hiding in dark alleys. In fact, many more sexual assaults take place between acquaintances. That young man you’ve known through work or school is much more likely to assault you than a total stranger is.
He focuses on one college town, and a couple of star football players, and the women who were their victims. The events he details began in 2010 and he follows the cases through about 2014, exploring how the assaults affected the rapists, the detectives, the women victims, their friends and families. It is at times a very disturbing book. But it is one that more people should read. This topic SHOULD make us uncomfortable, we should be enraged at the way in which the justice systems treats these women, and at the way in which the universities (and their all-important big-donor alumni) dismiss the women’s stories in favor of supporting the athletes.
Krakauer chose this particular state-run Montana university and the football players involved. But this story could just as easily have been based at a private college in the East, or featured rapists who were not star athletes.
The audio version is jointly narrated by Mozhan Marno and Scott Brick. Marno does most of the book, with Brick voicing the forward and the final chapter where Krakauer writes in first person. They do an exceptionally good job.
magsnificentmils's review against another edition
challenging
tense
medium-paced
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual violence, Rape, and Sexual assault
Moderate: Sexism and Misogyny
maryquitecontrary_22's review against another edition
3.0
(Listened to the audiobook version) - Krakauer's exposé of the campus rape 'epidemic' is important and timely, and the reminder of how adversarial our justice system has become is a fair judgement. If you pick this book up, don't expect an objective view though-- you'll find yourself both agreeing with him and disagreeing with him in the course of the text. My biggest complaint is how tedious and redundant the verbatim court transcripts, reports, and interviews became. That's the job of the author-- to turn the majority of all that research into an engaging narrative rather than chapter upon chapter of quoted material so that we aren't bored to tears.
caillahess's review against another edition
challenging
informative
medium-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape
sksrenninger's review against another edition
3.0
I do automatically assume a woman who says she has been sexually assaulted is telling the truth unless her story has been proven false (or more complicated). That being said, I would have liked a little more nuance into how a jury might have deliberated or what/how the accused boys viewed the events, or to read a more impartial representation of Kirsten Pabst's position. Perhaps, because I didn't need to be convinced that women are suffering and usually telling the truth, I wasn't the best audience for this book, but I felt like this aggressively one-sided story didn't do the situation justice and doesn't really contribute to the dialogue on sexual assault in the US. My favorite (if favorite is a word you can use when talking about rape) parts by far were the sections where Krakauer goes into Lisak's research on rapists. Horrifying, but enlightening.