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From the publisher:
"With Patty鈥檚 Got a Gun, the first substantial reconsideration of Patty Hearst鈥檚 story in more than twenty-five years, William Graebner vividly re-creates the atmosphere of uncertainty and frustration of mid-1970s America. Drawing on copious media accounts of the robbery and trial鈥攁s well as cultural artifacts from glam rock to Invasion of the Body Snatchers鈥擥raebner paints a compelling portrait of a nation confused and frightened by the upheavals of 1960s liberalism and beginning to tip over into what would become Reagan-era conservatism, with its invocations of individual responsibility and the heroic. Trapped in the middle of that shift, the affectless, zombielike, 鈥渂rainwashed鈥 Patty Hearst was a ready-made symbol of all that seemed to have gone wrong with the sixties鈥攖he inevitable result, some said, of rampant permissiveness, feckless elitism, the loss of moral clarity, and feminism run amok."