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Reviews
Reviews
[The Algiers Motel Incident] demonstrates [Hersey's] astonishing talent for eliciting oral history and forensically reconstructing the experiences of people who have endured a major disaster.
Hersey's extremely careful and cogent account of the Algiers Motel incident does not suggest that [the law enforcement officers involved] conspired to do anything... It suggests strongly the contrary: that they were doing what came naturally to them, and doing it with gusto.
This is a brilliant book, a tour de force.
Hersey's book is based on months of personal investigation and contains evidence never before made public. He ransacked every available piece of documentation. Thus armed, he tried to work out a tentative scenario of events and, more important, used his data to build up what may be the truest picture yet of the white policeman's role in the ghettos... His collage of interviews, fact, and intuition... jells into a forceful dossier against racism in the U.S. system of justice.
Inviting and justifying comparisons with Hiroshima, this is Hersey's cauterizing exemplification of the 'most intransigent and fear ridden issue in American life' via the Algiers Motel incident, the wanton murders of three alleged 'snipers' and attendant sexual abuses by the police, during the Detroit riot. Many issues and many people are involved here and with as relentless a glare as the dome light on a police car, Hersey zeroes in on them. There are many 'hurting feeling[s]' here which involve the reader, just as it has Hersey, and certainly there will be many who will be reached who might not be otherwise. The 'incident' however has been handled in such a fashion that it provides all the sociodynamics of the racial thunderhead—an intense, intensive documentary.
About
Book Details
Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x 9
Pages
432
ISBN
9781421432977
Illustration Description
1 b&w illus
Table of Contents
Foreword: Danielle L. McGuire
Introduction: John Hersey and the Tragedy of Race
Part I: The Odor of a Case July 26–31
1. Do You Hate the Police?
2. A Dangerous Account
3. Too Hot to Handle
Part II: Three
Foreword: Danielle L. McGuire
Introduction: John Hersey and the Tragedy of Race
Part I: The Odor of a Case July 26–31
1. Do You Hate the Police?
2. A Dangerous Account
3. Too Hot to Handle
Part II: Three Cops and Three Days July 23–5
4. The First Day
5. Snake
6. The Second Day
7. An Out-of-Doors Man
8. The Third Day
9. Quiet and Respectable
10. An Alarm of Snipers
Part III: Auburey and His Circle
11. The Fork in the Road
Part IV: Confession July 31
12. Could You Get My Statement Back?
Part V: The Algiers Motel Incident July 25—6
13. The Snipers
14. A Game of Chess
15. Man, They're Going to Shoot
16. How to Attack a Building
17. Everybody Downstairs!
18. Phone Calls
19. Enter and Exit: State Police
20. Conduct Becoming an Officer
21. Up and Down the Line
22. Just in Time to Pray
23. Enter Warrant Officer Thomas
24. Interrogations
25. The Knife Game
26. Skin Show
27. The Death Game
28. The Death Game Played Out
29. Out
Part VI: Aftermath July 31 and after
30. A Matter for Investigation
31. First Man in Court
32. First Man in Court
33. Senak's Peninsula
34. These Are Not Little Boys
35. The Law Was Made by People
36. Law and Order for All?
37. Under Indictment
38. A Mother Speaks
39. The Net Is Thrown Again
40. Snipers: The Myth
41. Fuel for the Fire Next Time
42. Harassment?
43. The Paille Appeal
44. A Numbness
45. Conspiracy?
46. Padlocking
47. A Cutting
48. A Winter of Waiting
49. Three Men at Work
50. The Legal Maze
51. Last Words
52. What Is Wrong with the Country?
