February 1, 2022
Having revealed Harvey Weinstein's violent behavior two decades ago in a New Yorker profile, Auletta asks in Hollywood Ending whether Weinstein's sexual predation can be attributed to himself alone or to the Hollywood power game--and why it took so long to challenge it. Tech theorist and venture capitalist Ball explains The Metaverse as a three-dimensional network of interconnected experiences and devices, tools and infrastructure that transcends virtual reality and has the capacity to reshape society. In Nobody Is Protected, Geopolitics editor in chief Jones (Border Walls) tracks the U.S. Border Patrol from its brutal early days to its current power to conduct warrantless stops and interrogations within 100 miles of the border, arguing that it is trampling on the Fourth Amendment in its bid to become a national police force. From New York Times best-selling, National Magazine Award-winning Leibovich (This Town), Thank You for Your Servitude critiques the cult of submission in the Republican Party that allowed Donald Trump to flourish. A veteran of the U.S. intelligence community's Combating Terrorism program, the Black, Arabic-speaking Nance shifts his focus from al Qaeda and ISIS to the threat posed by the January 6, 2021, insurrectionists and their supporters--privileged, he argues, by their whiteness--in They Want To Kill Americans (200,000-copy first printing).
Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
May 15, 2022
A sad tale of sex, lies, and power in Hollywood. In 2002, Auletta published a profile of Harvey Weinstein in the New Yorker, portraying him as a "self-absorbed narcissist" who verbally and physically abused his employees. "Those who worked for Harvey," the author discovered, "were daunted by his talent yet terrorized by his volcanic personality." At the time, Auletta heard "whispers" that Weinstein sexually abused women but could not corroborate them. Fifteen years later, scores of women finally came forward, and Weinstein's behavior made headlines in the New York Times, soon followed by an expos� in the New Yorker. In 2017, Weinstein was arrested on charges of criminal sexual assault and rape. Drawing on 12 hours of taped interviews with Weinstein for the New Yorker piece and several hundred interviews with employees and associates, including Weinstein's brother Bob, Auletta expands his earlier profile, chronicling Weinstein's volatile career as a movie mogul and recounting in dismal detail the "numbing sameness" of his abuse of women. "His game was not seduction," writes Auletta, "but subjugation, and he sought out the vulnerable. His boastful, trophy mentality toward actresses has been noted by many, but he also prowled among his own staff." His career began in Buffalo, where, in the 1970s, he became a concert promoter, honing his persona as "a money-obsessed entrepreneur and trickster in the making." He partnered with Bob to create a distribution firm they called Miramax, combining their parents' first names, and later a production firm, the Weinstein Company, which released many award-winning films including Pulp Fiction and Shakespeare in Love. As the author shows, Bob was unable--and often unwilling--to rein in his "impulsive" brother as their business roiled in a cycle of near bankruptcy, success, and profligate overspending. Auletta's deep familiarity with the film industry serves him well in depicting the making, marketing, and reception of the Weinsteins' movies. Aiming to portray Weinstein as "more than a monster," the author offers ample evidence that he is a sociopath. An authoritative, sordid biography.
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June 1, 2022
Journalist Auletta (Greed and Glory on Wall Street) has plenty to say about Harvey Weinstein. While preparing his 2002 profile on Weinstein for Vanity Fair, Auletta uncovered stories of sexual assault but was stymied by lack of on-the-record victim testimony. He makes up for lost time with a year-by-year biography that presents Weinstein not merely as a sexual abuser but a toxic narcissist who physically and psychologically mistreated employees and ignored financial limitations to feed his craving for public acclaim. Weinstein was enabled by an industry where his aberrant behavior was excused by influence and success. In spite of its unflinching criticism of its subject, this book is no hatchet job. Auletta acknowledges Weinstein's tremendous drive and effect on Hollywood and probes the psychology that might lie behind his actions. This gives his portrait of Weinstein vital depth. Well-researched and packed with detail--possibly too packed for some readers, who may find the thorough recounting of Weinstein's assaults, boardroom wars, and trial procedures results in information overload. VERDICT As a comprehensive account of the rise and fall of the Weinstein name, Auletta's volume is a critical text and worthy of sitting beside Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor's She Said.--Kathleen McCallister
Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from May 15, 2022
The list of celebrated movies brought to the screen by Harvey Weinstein's Miramax Films is breathtaking: My Left Foot, Il Postino, The Cider House Rules, The Piano, The English Patient, Pulp Fiction, Shakespeare in Love, and No Country for Old Men among them. Even more breathtaking, though, was the appalling level of abuse--verbal, physical, sexual, and profoundly -emotional--that Weinstein brought for decades upon his staff, his investors, industry rivals, his own brother and partner, the media (including the author, by his account), and, most tragically, the more than 100 women who ultimately came forward with assault charges against him. Longtime New Yorker media reporter Auletta delivers a compelling, assiduously reported, full-formed biography of Weinstein, from his Queens youth all the way to his trial, conviction, and 2020 sentencing to 23 years in prison for criminal sexual assault and third-degree rape. Auletta is keenly sensitive here to the "long half-life of trauma" these many women experienced, yet also unsparingly graphic in detailing how Weinstein would entrap his victims, enabled by a host of individuals and forces that allowed such monstrous behavior to continue unchallenged for so long. A definitive, unblinking account of sexual abuse and violence in the American movie history.
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