A still-chilling tale of law-enforcement misconduct.
An earnest attorney looks back at a notorious 1960s slaying.
Haas, a founder of the People’s Law Office (PLO) in 1969, renders this disturbing eyewitness account in straightforward prose. It’s a memoir of his experiences as well as the story of an incident still recalled in Chicago as a deplorable example of police brutality. Growing up Jewish in middle-class Atlanta, the author’s early awareness of Jim Crow propelled him toward engagement in progressive politics. As a young lawyer in Chicago, he became fascinated with the youthful Fred Hampton, who combined a passion for the black militant cause with eloquence and cool-headedness. Haas volunteered the PLO’s services to the Panthers shortly before the fateful events of Dec. 4, 1969. The entire city became mired in tension as word spread that officers working for State’s Attorney Edward Hanrahan had riddled Hampton’s apartment with bullets, killing two and wounding several Panthers. Hanrahan and the Chicago police were quickly put on the defensive, as the African-American community seethed over an evident cover-up: “It was clear to anyone viewing the ravaged apartment that Fred was shot to death on his bed.” The raid accomplished the goals of Hanrahan and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, as the Panthers rapidly declined in membership and influence. “No one could replace Fred’s charisma, energy, or organizing ability,” Haas writes. However, the murder destroyed the credibility of Chicago law enforcement and the Chicago Tribune, and ruptured the relationship between the black community and the Daley political machine. When charges against the Panthers were hastily dropped and a federal grand jury petered out, the PLO lawyers pursued a civil-rights suit, never dreaming that it would take 15 years to settle. Along the way, they unearthed proof that the FBI’s COINTEL program had encouraged violence against the Panthers. Although the dramatic tension dissipates in the book’s second half, which covers the suit in minute detail, Haas mostly avoids leftist melodrama and offers a diligent defense of the legal rights of political radicals.
A still-chilling tale of law-enforcement misconduct.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-55652-765-4
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Lawrence Hill Books/Chicago Review
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2009
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
