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

In 1974, members of the Symbionese Liberation Army abducted nineteen-year-old Patty Hearst, granddaughter of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, from her apartment in Berkeley. Jeffrey Toobin reconstructs the nineteen months that followed, detailing Hearst’s transition from a captive to "Tania," an armed revolutionary who participated in bank robberies and bombings. The narrative tracks the ineptitude of early FBI investigations, the radical political climate of 1970s California, and the eventual legal battle where defense attorney F. Lee Bailey failed to convince a jury that Hearst had been brainwashed.

True crime enthusiasts and readers interested in American social history will find this a methodical study of identity and criminal liability. Toobin rejects the popular theory of Stockholm syndrome, instead arguing that Hearst was a rational actor adapting to her circumstances to survive. Readers finish the book with a technical understanding of the Symbionese Liberation Army’s inner workings and a clear perspective on how wealth and celebrity influenced the judicial outcome of one of the decade's most chaotic criminal cases.