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The Price Of Silence: The Duke Lacrosse Scandal, The Power Of The Elite, And The Corruption Of Our Great Universities (2014)

by William D. Cohan(Favorite Author)

3.11 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1451681798 (ISBN13: 9781451681796)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Scribner

review 1: Might be a good read if you are completely unfamiliar with the 2006 case of Duke lacrosse players accused of rape, or you've forgotten some of the aftermath re accuser, or for some reason you're seeing this review in about 2036 and can't remember what a big deal Coach K is/was at Duke, or.....For everyone else, I would skip it. Extremely overlong (600 or so tiny-font pages) recap of what just about everybody involved or even interested in the case did or said on a daily, at times hourly, basis. Nothing really new on "the power of the elite" or "the corruption of our great universities" so this is solely for lacrosse scandal obsessives. If you like examples and quotes, they are here in abundance -- Nifong (the DA) was concerned about reelection and backing and filling be... morefore the DNA results even came back; accuser's testimony was inconsistent; lax bros are arrogant; liberal faculty jump to conclusions etc. -- all belabored by quoting everyone's contemporaneous magazine/newspaper stories about the case at length.In short, disturbing and engrossing story in real time, boring by now in this telling. Try Stuart Taylor's book on the case instead.
review 2: This is a tale of a perfect scandal: privileged white student athletes sexually assault working class African-American woman, revealing the sorry depths of racism and misogyny still thriving in the American south. Only one problem: they didn't do it. My feelings about this book are tangled with my memories of the case, which I followed closely. I was sure the accused players were guilty, after all I've known so many high school and college athletes who behaved just like this and could easily have committed a similar crime. I was stunned when the charges were dropped and it turned out there was no crime to prosecute.There's not a single sympathetic person in this book. What's more, there seems to be little anyone could have done differently to prevent the whole mess once the alleged rape was reported. It's really depressing.The book strives to be comprehensive but is mostly just tedious. Nothing about it was enjoyable. less

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