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American Heiress

American Heiress

The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst

by Jeffrey Toobin
CD-Audio
Publication Date: 02/08/2016

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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 circuslike 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?

ISBN:
9780449807507
9780449807507
Category:
Biography: general
Format:
CD-Audio
Publication Date:
02-08-2016
Language:
English
Publisher:
Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Country of origin:
United States
Dimensions (mm):
147.32x129.54x30.48mm
Weight:
0.31kg
Jeffrey Toobin

Jeffrey Toobin is the New York Times bestselling author of American Heiress, The Oath, The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, Too Close to Call, A Vast Conspiracy, The Run of His Life: The People vs. O.J. Simpson, and Opening Arguments.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, he lives with his family in New York.

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