American heiress
Subtitle: the wild saga of the kidnapping, crimes and trial of Patty Hearst
By: Jeffrey Toobin
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 371
ISBN-13: 9780385536721; 9780385536714
Subjects: Trials, litigation; Trials (Robbery); Symbionese Liberation Army
Description: Examines the life of Patty Hearst who suffered an unimaginable trauma and then made the stunning decision to join her captors' crusade.

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 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 bank security cameras capturing "Tania" wielding a machine gun during a robbery; a cast of characters including everyone from basketball star 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 across the country; Patty's year on the lam; and her circuslike trial, 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, Toobin thrillingly recounts the craziness of the times, portraying the lunacy of the half-baked radicals and the toxic mix of sex, politics, and violence that swept up Patty Hearst. He 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?--Adapted from dust jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages [345]-351) and index.
Table of contents: title: Nervous breakdown nation; title: From inside the trunk; title: The SLA; title: The point of no return; title: Prisoner of war; title: Not just a bunch of nuts; title: Three hundred bald men; title: "I'm a strong woman"; title: The birth of Tania; title: Stay and fight; title: Common criminals; title: Showdown at Mel's; title: Live on television; title: Apocalypse on Fifty-Fourth Street; title: "The gentlest, most beautiful man"; title: Jack Scott makes and offer; title: Road trip; title: The streets of Sacramento; title: Death of a "bourgeois pig"; title: Feminist bomb-making; title: Freeze!; title: "There will be a revolution in Amerikkka and we'll be helping to make it"; title: "Your ever-loving momma and poppa care about the truth"; title: More excited than scared; title: The search for old McMonkey; title: The verdict; title: "Favoring the rich over the poor".