Algiers Motel Incident, The

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1968. BOOK: Spine Bumped; Light Shelf Rub to Boards; Slight Yellowing Due to Age. DUST JACKET: Repaired; Moderately Creased; Moderately Chipped; In Archival Quality Jacket Cover. BOOK NUMBER: 6/68. JACKET DESIGN BY: S. Neil Fujita. CONTENTS: I THE ODOR OF A CASE (July 26-31) 1 Do You Hate the Police? 2 A Dangerous Account 3 Too Hot to Handle II THREE COPS AND THREE DAYS (July 23-5) 4 The First Day 5 Snake 6 The Second Day 7 An Out-of-Doors Man 8 The Third Day 9 Quiet and Respectable 10 An Alarm of Snipers III AUBUREY AND HIS CIRCLE 11 The Fork in the Road IV CONFESSION (July 31) 12 Could You Get My Statement Back? V THE ALGIERS MOTEL INCIDENT (July 25-6) 13 The Snipers 14 A Game of Chess 15 Man, They're Going to Shoot 16 How to Attack a Building 17 Everybody Downstairs! 18 Phone Calls 19 Enter and Exit: State Police 20 Conduct Becoming an Officer 21 Up and Down the Line 22 Just in Time to Pray 23 Enter Warrant Officer Thomas 24 Interrogations 25 The Knife Game 26 Skin Show 27 The Death Game 28 The Death Game Played Out 29 Out VI AFTERMATH (July 31 and after) 30 A Matter for Investigation 31 First Man in Court 32 Logical to Be Nervous 33 Senak's Peninsula 34 These Are Not Little Boys 35 The Law Was Made by People 36 Law and Order for All? 37 Under Indictment 38 A Mother Speaks 39 The Net Is Thrown Again 40 Snipers: The Myth 41 Fuel for the Fire Next Time 42 Harassment? 43 The Paille Appeal 44 A Numbness 45 Conspiracy? 46 Padlocking 47 A Cutting 48 A Winter of Waiting 49 Three Men at Work 50 The Legal Maze 51 Last Words 52 What Is Wrong With the Country? SYNOPSIS: This is John Hersey's account of an incident in the Detroit riot of 1967. The episode, Mr. Hersey writes, "contained all the mythic themes of racial strife in the United States: the arm of the law taking the law into its own hands; interracial sex; the subtle poison of racist thinking by 'decent' men who deny that they are racists; the societal limbo into which so many young black men have been driven; ambiguous justice in the courts; and the devastation in both black and white human lives that follows in the wake of violence." On the fourth day of the Detroit riots the newspaper reported that three Negroes had been killed in a sniper battle at the Algiers Motel. The night before--Tuesday, July 25--rumors of sniping were widespread. Responding to a telephone report of shots fired in the vicinity, a number of Detroit police officers, state troopers, and National Guardsmen rushed to the annex of the Algiers Motel, about a mile and a half from the center of the riot area. Inside they found ten black men and two white girls. The police began questioning them. No guns were found. One hour later, when the police left, three of the men lay dead, shot at close range. The others, including the two girls, had been severely beaten. The police made no report of the incident to their superiors. A Negro called the morgue. What really happened at the Algiers Motel? Mr. Hersey spent months on a detailed investigation--questioning the survivors, talking to the family and friends of the dead men, listening to the people in the neighborhood, examining police and court records, interviewing federal, state, city, and Police Department officials, including the three Detroit policemen who where subsequently indicted. His meticulous reconstruction of the incident at the Algiers Motel, and of the complex social circumstances that created the atmosphere in which it could occur, goes far beyond any account on record about the Detroit riots--or any of the riots that have erupted across the country. It calls into question some of the most fundamental assumptions about the nature of law and order and the application of justice in American society. Mr. Hersey's report from Detroit has in it both the shock of revelation and the seeds of action. The story itself insists that from this day on the men entrusted with the responsibility of policing, judging, and penalizing their fellow Americans apply the same standards to all--so that black Americans as well as white may truly perceive "law and order" as a benefit, not as a pretext for the denial and suppression of their rights as citizens of the United States. John Hersey was born in Tientsin, China, in 1914, and lived there until 1925, when his family returned to the United States. He was graduated from Yale in 1936 and attended Clare College, Cambridge University, for a year. He was private secretary to Sinclair Lewis during a subsequent summer and then worked as a journalist and war correspondent. His first novel, A Bell for Adano, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1945, and the next year he wrote Hiroshima, an account of the first atomic bombing. Since 1947 he has devoted his time mainly to fiction and has published The Wall (1950), The Marmot Drive (1953), A Single Pebble (1956), The War Lover (1959), The Child Buyer (1960), White Lotus (1965), Too Far to Walk (1966), and Under the Eye of the Storm (1967). Mr. Hersey is now Master of Pierson College at Yale.. First Edition 1st Printing. Hard Cover. Fine/Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.