Jeffrey Toobin

discusses

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

in conversation with DAVID BOERI

$5 tickets on sale now

This event includes a book signing

Date

Aug
3
Wednesday
August 3, 2016
6:00 PM ET
(Doors at 5:30)

Location

Brattle Theatre
40 Brattle St., Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets

Harvard Book Store welcomes New Yorker staff writer and bestselling author JEFFREY TOOBIN and WBUR reporter and writer DAVID BOERI for a discussion of Toobin's latest book, American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst—the definitive account of the kidnapping and trial that defined an era in American history.

About American Heiress

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?

David Boeri
David Boeri

David Boeri

Radio reporter, writer, and former long-time television reporter at WCVB’s News Center Five, David Boeri is the 2012 winner of the National Edward R. Murrow award for investigative journalism, the New England Edward R. Murrow award for investigative journalism, the New England Associated Press award for hard news reporting, and a winner of the ACLU Defender of Freedom award for his work at WBUR.

He is the author of the e-book Bulger on Trial: Boston’s Most Notorious Gangster and The Pursuit of Justice, published in November 2013.

Jeffrey Toobin
Jeffrey Toobin

Jeffrey Toobin

Jeffrey Toobin is chief legal analyst at CNN and a staff writer at The New Yorker. He is the author of several bestselling books, including American Heiress, The Oath, The Nine, and The Run of His Life, which was the basis for American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson, the acclaimed FX Networks limited series. A Vast Conspiracy, his book about the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal, will be the basis of the 2021 installment of American Crime Story.

Tickets are also available at Harvard Book Store and over the phone at 617-661-1515. Unless the event is sold out, any remaining tickets will be on sale at the door of the venue when doors open.

Tickets are non-refundable and non-returnable.

Brattle Theatre
40 Brattle St., Cambridge, MA 02138

Walking from the Harvard Square T station: 10 minutes

As you exit the station, cross Mass. Ave. and proceed along Brattle St. Follow Brattle St. as it curves to the right in Brattle Square (follow the sidewalk on the right side of the street). The Brattle will be on the left-hand side of the street. The building is shared with Algiers Cafe and Alden & Harlow Restaurant, and the theatre entrance is on the left side of the building—look for the sidewalk poster case and marquee.

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