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A review by mjwerts
American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst by Jeffrey Toobin
3.0
The Patty Hearst kidnapping occurred almost a decade before I was born, and I went into this book knowing nothing about the events it documents, which made every page a new discovery.
Toobin does a good job providing context and insight into the cultural and political landscape in which the Patty Hearst kidnapping occurred. Although for an uninformed reader like me to truly understand the hows and whys of the attitudes and actions of individuals in the 1970s counterculture, I think I need a whole separate book. Into this background, he weaves the story of the SLA and Patty Hearst, which is so sensational (in the tabloid-sense of the word) that if you read the same story in a fictional novel, you'd think it was highly improbable and unrealistic. It's a crazy tale, and Toobin writes about it well, but as Hearst continues to elude the authorities, the story gets a bit tedious. This isn't Toobin's fault, as it's what really happened, but it also means the book drags for awhile in the second half.
Toobin does a good job providing context and insight into the cultural and political landscape in which the Patty Hearst kidnapping occurred. Although for an uninformed reader like me to truly understand the hows and whys of the attitudes and actions of individuals in the 1970s counterculture, I think I need a whole separate book. Into this background, he weaves the story of the SLA and Patty Hearst, which is so sensational (in the tabloid-sense of the word) that if you read the same story in a fictional novel, you'd think it was highly improbable and unrealistic. It's a crazy tale, and Toobin writes about it well, but as Hearst continues to elude the authorities, the story gets a bit tedious. This isn't Toobin's fault, as it's what really happened, but it also means the book drags for awhile in the second half.