Reporting on the same crime as Jerry Bledsoe in Blood Games (see above), McGinniss (Blind Faith, 1988; Fatal Vision, 1983, etc.) again shows why he heads the ranks of true-crime authors—delivering a page-burner of shifting suspicions, macabre ironies, and reversals of field too extreme for fiction. In the early morning of July 25, 1988, in the town of Washington, N.C., Bonnie Von Stein, 44, and her second husband, Lieth, were attacked in their bedroom by a stranger wielding a club and a knife. Lieth was killed and Bonnie survived with stab wounds, head lacerations, and a collapsed lung. Having almost no clues, detectives turned their attention to Bonnie's college-age son and daughter. When the children were brought to intensive care, they seemed bored by their mother and completely indifferent to their stepfather's death. As she recuperated, Bonnie also seemed too cool, too efficient to the local gumshoes. When it was discovered that Lieth had left two million dollars, she too became a suspect. Eventually the investigation narrowed to Chris Pritchard (Bonnie's son) and his college buddies. Instead of going to class, they played weeks-Ions games of Dungeons & Dragons, acting out fantasies fueled by alcohol, Ecstasy, pot, and much LSD. Eleven months after the attack, Pritchard was charged with murder and a long manhunt began for the "Dungeon Master," a shady figure named Moog. Pritchard had sent Moog and another player to his family house: If they killed the parents, there would be enough money for Ferraris, top-end stereo equipment, and serious computers. Covering the trial, McGinniss draws a chilling portrait of Pritchard's lawyer agonizing over the good chance he has of getting Pritchard off. The lawyer dislikes Pritchard's insolence and tells his colleagues he fears the boy will murder again if acquitted—so he cuts a deal with the D.A. ensuring that Pritchard will not be executed, but will do life. Exciting reading that edges out Bledsoe's account and, no doubt, will hit the charts and find a home there.
Pub Date: Oct. 21, 1991
ISBN: 0-671-67947-3
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1991
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 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.
