by Elinor Langer
St. Martins Press-3PL
11/1/2004, paperback
SKU: 9780312423636
On November 12, 1988, a group of Portland, Oregon, skinheads known as East Side White Pride encountered three Ethiopians in a street fight, resulting in the brutal death of Mulugeta Seraw.
For award-winning journalist Elinor Langer, the Seraw case is the launchpad for a thorough investigation of the Nazi-inspired racist movement in the United States. She vividly reconstructs the world of the skinheads: their origins in the punk scene, their basement shrines to Nazi power, their moments of glory on Oprah and Geraldo. She examines the long-standing radical groups that encouraged the movement, tracking the progress of such powerful figures as White Aryan Resistance leader Tom Metzger through key bastions of the Far Right. In gripping detail, she follows civil-rights lawyer Morris Dees's efforts to prove Metzger responsible for the Portland killing-a sensational campaign to curb the growth of neo-Nazism.
Compelling, disturbing, and important, A Hundred Little Hitlers is both an epic account of racism and justice and a close examination of social forces that loom ever more dangerously today.
Reviews:
"Elinor Langer is one of our most eloquent and astute social critics. Telling this troubling story of murder and racism in an American town, she compels us to think beyond that, to wonder about the future of justice in our country."--Howard Zinn, author of
"There are works of journalism so intelligent, scrupulous, thorough, and deep that they outlive their occasions and instantly rise to the level of classics. Elinor Langer's A Hundred Little Hitlers is [in] this very rare company. This is not the investigation of a murder: it is an investigation of a society." --Todd Gitlin, author of Media Unlimited
About the Author:
Elinor Langer, author of the acclaimed biography Josephine Herbst, has written for The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, and The Nation, among other publications. A Hundred Little Hitlers was chonsen as a finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Award for work-in-progress. Langer lives in Portland, Oregon.
