The Algiers Motel Incident

Author:   John Hersey ,  Thomas J. Sugrue
Publisher:   Johns Hopkins University Press
Edition:   New edition
ISBN:  

9780801857775


Pages:   418
Publication Date:   19 December 1997
Recommended Age:   From 18
Replaced By:   9781421432977
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Awaiting stock   Availability explained


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The Algiers Motel Incident


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Overview

"This volume provides an account of the Algier's Motel incident in 1967, when three black men were killed and nine other people brutally beaten in the Algiers Motel by, as the author describes it, an ""aggregate of Detroit police, Michigan State Troopers, National Guardsmen and private guards who had been directed to the scene"" following a telephone report of a sniping incident."

Full Product Details

Author:   John Hersey ,  Thomas J. Sugrue
Publisher:   Johns Hopkins University Press
Imprint:   Johns Hopkins University Press
Edition:   New edition
Dimensions:   Width: 13.30cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 21.00cm
Weight:   0.499kg
ISBN:  

9780801857775


ISBN 10:   0801857775
Pages:   418
Publication Date:   19 December 1997
Recommended Age:   From 18
Audience:   General/trade ,  College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General ,  Undergraduate
Replaced By:   9781421432977
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Out of Print
Availability:   Awaiting stock   Availability explained

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Reviews

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. --Edgar Z. Friedenberg, 'New York Review of Books' This is a brilliant book, a 'tour de force.' --'American Sociological Review'


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. -- Edgar Z. Friedenberg * New York Review of Books * This is a brilliant book, a tour de force. * American Sociological Review * 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. -- R.A. Sokolov * Newsweek * [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. -- Nicholas Lemann * The New Yorker *


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 glate as the dome light on a police car, Hersey zeroes in on them. Among the former, beyond the specter of interracial sex at the very core of racism and the incident here, there's the primary question of unequal justice which the black populace faces, from the cop on the beat to the judge in the courtroom. As for the people - Hersey uses the transcripts (some official, some secured on interviews) of the families of the three dead boys, their associates including the go-go girls from Chicago who were victims of the skin show the law staged, police officers, officials, etc. In spite of the strident confusion which surrounded the entire incident which was literally triggered by some byplay with a starter pistol, it is all ineluctably evident - from police officer David Senak's I was overzealous to the mother of one of the victims who regretted the police's failure to notify her of the death of her son - It's a hurting feeling. There are many hurting feeling 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. (Kirkus Reviews)


Author Information

John Hersey won the Pulitzer Prize in 1945 for his first novel, A Bell for Adano. He is the author of Hiroshima and many novels, including The Wall, The Child Buyer, Under the Eye of the Storm, and Blues. He died in 1993. Thomas Sugrue is an assistant professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania and author of The Origins of the Urban Crisis.

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