American Heiress (Toobin)

American Heiress:  The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst
Jeffrey Toobin, 2016
Knopf Doubleday
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385536714


Summary
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? (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—May 21, 1960
• Where—New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., J.D., Harvard University
• Awards—Emmy Award; J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York


Jeffrey Ross Toobin is an American lawyer, author, and senior legal analyst for CNN and a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. He was born in New York City, the son of former ABC News and CBS News correspondent Marlene Sanders, and news broadcasting producer Jerome Toobin. His mother's family was of a relatively secular Jewish background.

Education
In 1982, Toobin graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with a BA in classics. In 1986, he graduated from Harvard Law School, again magna cum laude, with a JD. He also served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. While a law student, Toobin began freelancing for The New Republic.

Legal work
 After law school, Tobin went on to clerk to a federal judge. Later during the Iran-Contra affair and Oliver North's criminal trial, Toobin worked as an associate counsel to Independent Counsel Lawrence Edward Walsh who was appointed to investigate and try the case.

Toobin wrote a book about his work with Walsh on the Oliver North case. According to journalist Michael Isikoff, he was caught "having absconded with large loads of classified and grand-jury related documents" from Walsh's office. Toobin, however, disputed the assertion of impropriety and went to court to affirm his right to publish. Judge John Keenan of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York wrote vindicated the rights of Toobin and his publisher to release his book, which they did in 1991. An appeal for the case was dismissed.

Having objected to Toobin's decision take the documents, Walsh later wrote that he "could understand a young lawyer wanting to keep copies of his own work, but not copying material from the general files or the personal files of others."

After leaving the Independent Counsel, Toobin went to work for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Brooklyn. Three years later he left the DA's office, deciding to abandon the practice of law altogether.

Media
In 1993 Toobin joined The New Yorker as a staff writer, a position he occupies still. In 1994, he broke the story in the magazine that the O. J. Simpson legal team planned to play "the race card" by accusing Mark Fuhrman of planting evidence.

Also in 1994, Toobin became a television legal analyst for ABC. He joined CNN in 2002 as a senior legal analyst—one year later securing the first interview with Martha Stewart about the insider trading charges brought against her. He remains with CNN today.

Toobin has provided broadcast legal analysis on many high-profile cases, including Michael Jackson's 2005 child molestation trial, the O.J. Simpson civil case, and the Starr investigation of President Clinton. He received a 2000 Emmy Award for his coverage of the Elian Gonzalez custody saga.

Books
1991 - Opening arguments: A Young Lawyer's First Case, United States v. Oliver North
1997 - The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson*
1999 - A vast conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal that Nearly Brought Down a President
2001 - Too close to Call: The Thirty-six-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election
2007 - The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court (J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize)
2012 - The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court
2016 - American heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst

Personal life
In 1986, Toobin married Amy Bennett McIntosh. The couple met in college while they worked at the Harvard Crimson. She is a 1980 Harvard graduate, holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, and has held executive positions at Verizon and Zagat Survey. They have two children.

Toobin had a long-term extramarital affair with Casey Greenfield, daughter of American television journalist and author Jeff Greenfield. Toobin was eventually confirmed as the father of Casey's child (b. March 2009). Greenfield has sole custody. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 9/27/2016.)

* The Run of His Life became the basis for the FX miniseries, The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story (2016), starring Cuba Gooding Jr.

Book Reviews
American Heiress, Jeffrey Toobins new book about Patty Hearst, is a clever companion piece to The Run of His Life (1996), his book about the O. J. Simpson case. Mr. Toobin has used the same winning formula of delving deeply into an American crime story that had tremendous notoriety in its day and retelling it with new resonance. Ms. Hearst's tale is much more bizarre than Mr. Simpson's. And much less of it has to do with legal proceedings, Mr. Toobin's specialty. But in an age of terrorism, the chronicle of how a sedate heiress named Patricia morphed into a gun-toting, invective-spouting revolutionary calling herself Tania holds a definite fascination…. Mr. Toobin's account makes the transformation understandable.
Janet Maslin - New York Times


[T]errifically engrossing…As in his earlier book The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson, Toobin uses his knowledge of the justice system and his examination of the evidence to pierce the veil of spectacle and make sense of many contradictory elements…His particulate telling is measured and understated, which is the right approach to such a high-mannerist American extravaganza…. The book's real power comes from Toobin's ability to convincingly and economically evoke a broad range of people…. Toobin's take on Hearst's state of mind is credible because he doesn't pretend clarity where there is none.
Dana Spiotta - New York Times Book Review


The abduction and subsequent radicalization of Patricia Hearst is one of the most bizarre but illuminating episodes of that tumultuous era of protest...and in American Heiress Jeffrey Toobin retells the story with a full-blown narrative treatment that may astonish readers too young to remember it themselves.... Toobin spins this complex chapter of recent history into an absorbing and intelligent page-turner.
Washington Post


[R]iveting…. American Heiress is a page-turner certainly, but Toobin, a gifted writer, infuses it with much more…. Even if he ridicules the ideas and condemns the violent deeds of this ragtag group of revolutionary wannabes, they emerge not as cardboard villains but flesh and blood protagonists.
Boston Globe


Toobin has crafted a book for the expert and the uninitiated alike, a smart page-turner that boasts a cache of never-before-published details.... Toobin’s book successfully captures the unrivaled spectacle of the Hearst drama.
San Francisco Chronicle


[A] spell-binding retelling.… In the end the real test of a writer’s worth is…how well they can tell a story that’s already been told many times before by many different people, including — in this case—by some of the main characters themselves. By that standard Toobin gets an A-plus for American Heiress… Everything about this book feels right: the structure, the style and the tone, which is the New Yorker meets Raymond Chandler. As always with great writing, it comes down to a strong, distinctive narrative voice spiced with the judicious use of juicy details.
LA Weekly 


(Starred review.) Toobin’s rigorous detective work is enhanced by his placement of the Hearst case in the context of its times.... His thorough research, careful parsing of all the evidence, and superior prose make the book read like a summertime thriller.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) Toobin's meticulous research is the book's bedrock, but his flair for dramatic storytelling makes it a pleasure to read. Though the author never states directly whether he believes Hearst's conversion was real, he provides all of the pieces needed for readers to assemble the puzzle for themselves. —Stephanie Klose
Library Journal


[A] detailed but swiftly moving account of the 1974 kidnapping that mesmerized the nation.... Despite the lack of participation from Hearst, this is a well-informed, engaging work from a highly capable author.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use these LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for American Heiress...then take off on your own:

1. What was the ideology of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) and what were its goals? How would you characterize the group and its tactics—clever, passionate, inept, foolish, or misguided? What did the SLA hope to gain by capturing Patty Hearst?

2. Toobin presents individual portraits of SLA members. Did those back stories generate any understanding or compassion on your part?

3. What was Patty Hearst like? How would you describe her: as a cossetted, spoiled, rich young woman...as haughty, humble, insecure, or shy? Does Toobin present her sympathetically or unsympathetically?

4. How do Patty's parents come off in this account, her father especially? Toobin praises Randy's "curiosity, his decency and above all his love for his daughter"? Do you agree? What about Patty's mother and her black dresses?
 
5. Talk about law enforcement's bungling of the case.

6. What prompted Hearst's decision to join the ranks of her captors? During the trial, her defense said she acted out of  “coercive persuasion” (what is now popularly referred to as "Stockholm Syndrome"). What was the basis of that defense...and is a convincing one to you? What does Toobin think?

7. Follow-up to Question 6: Was Patty Hearst a victim, or was she responsible for her crimes? Or does the truth fall somewhere in between? Put another way: do you think Hearst's conviction is fair? Should she have been cleared? Or do you think her sentence have been longer?

8. How does Toobin present the Hearst's lawyer, F. Lee Bailey?

9. Talk about Steven Weed. Toobin writes of him:

If there was one point of unanimity among the protagonists in the kidnapping...it was contempt for Patricia’s erstwhile fiance.

Why was he the subject of such loathing?

10. Describe Toobin's reaction toward Patty Hearst's campaign for a presidential pardon even though her sentence had been commuted. What do you think?

11. How familiar were you with the Hearst kidnapping before reading American Heiress? What have you learned after reading it? Were there any surprises?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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