02/15/2014
11/11/2013
"Cook debunks the whole parable of the 38 Bad Samaritans and puts forth the real story of what happened."
"Well written and often gripping."
"An ever important reminder that we never know as much about a story as we think."
"Cook’s restoration helps make Kitty human, not merely iconographic."
"Smart…suspenseful. [Cook’s] reporting…is rich and deep."
"A fully-realized portrait of Kitty… Readers won’t forget that she was a person, not a player in an anecdote."
Boston Sunday Globe - Michael Washburn
"Cook’s take on events is intelligent, superbly researched and truly unsettling, making this one of the best true crime books I’ve read in the last few years."
"Kevin Cook is raising big questions."
"Provocative… As much about the alchemy of journalism as urban pathology."
The Wall Street Journal - Edward Kosner
"[I]mpressive…"
Christian Science Monitor - Jordan Michael Smith
"Cook is [an] adept storyteller. His peppy knowing style calls to mind pop-culture products from the time of the murder…he is firmly and persuasively in the revisionist camp."
"Provocative."
"Kevin Cook rips the cover off an enduring urban myth. He’s done a first-rate reporting job, one that delivers the truth at last about an infamous murder that came to define an age."
"A grim and fascinating history and discussion of the "bystander effect"…this book asks hard questions of human nature."
"This is not a good book. This is a GREAT book. I don’t think I’ve read its compelling equal in twenty years. Every page reveals astonishing new facts about one of the most paralyzing events in the flawed soul of the American character. This is modern history at its storytelling best, ignored at the reader’s peril."
"Gripping."
New York Times - Amy Finnerty
"Kevin Cook is raising big questions."
NPR's All Things Considered
2014-01-21Titanic Thompson: The Man Who Bet on Everything , 2010, etc.) calls a "crime that lasted forever." It lasted "forever" both in the sense that Genovese's death was slow and painful from multiple stab wounds and in the psychological repercussions of the case, which would reverberate throughout academic and popular-culture circles for decades to come. The controversy that became front-page news and began to overshadow both victim and killer over the years was how 38 bystanders could have witnessed psychopath Winston Moseley stab young Genovese to death and not intervene in any way, thereby leaving her to die alone only a short walking distance from her apartment. Cook's main agenda is myth-busting while also exploring the ways in which society has collectively learned lessons from those same myths about the 38 passive bystanders. But as we find out through Cook's prolonged analysis of the case, Genovese's murder was not quite the lonely death it was made out to be. Nevertheless, the author cites instances of how both criminals and victims of crimes learned from these long-perpetuated "bystander" untruths, as he eventually arrives at some well-founded conclusions on this controversial subject. Cook's breathless pacing and painstaking research manage to make his minibio of Genovese sound more interesting that it should: He frames her own fairly quotidian existence (other than her attraction to women, which was definitely not quotidian in 1964) in the bigger picture of the important social changes that were taking place in New York City and in America as a whole in the early 1960s. The author's game-changing contribution to the Genovese case pushes past mere sensationalism into previously unexplored territory. An engrossing true-crime tour de force.
