eShop USA > Books > The Birthday Party: A Memoir of Survival
The Birthday Party: A Memoir of Survival
List Price: $24.95Our Price: $9.98 You Save: $14.97 (60%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.154092
EAN: 9780399154027
ISBN: 0399154027
Label: Putnam Adult
Manufacturer: Putnam Adult
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: January 18, 2007
Publisher: Putnam Adult
Studio: Putnam Adult
Related Items: Featured Listmania!
Editorial Review:
On January 21, 1998, the night before his thirty-eighth birthday, federal prosecutor Stanley Alpert was kidnapped off the streets of Manhattan. This is the story of what happened next. . . .
Alpert was taken by a carful of gun-toting thugs looking to use his ATM card, but when they learned his bank balance the plan changed. They took him, blindfolded with his own scarf, to a Brooklyn apartment, with the idea of going to a bank the next day and withdrawing most of his money. But the later it got, the more the plan changed again . . . and again . . . as his captors alternately held guns to his head, threatened his family, engaged him in discussions of "gangsta" philosophy, sought his legal advice, and, once they learned it was his birthday, offered him sexual favors from their prostitute girlfriends as a "birthday present." All the while, Alpert, still blindfolded, talked with them, played on their attitudes and fears, tried to figure out where their mood swings would take them next, and memorized every detail he could in the event that he ever managed to get out of there alive.
In the meantime, his friends and law enforcement colleagues, worried that they hadn't heard from him, launched a major police and FBI investigation. It, too, would take many twists and turns before it was done-and some of them would be very strange indeed.
Filled with immediacy, drama, and extraordinary characters, told not only from Alpert's memory and notes but from police reports, interviews with NYPD detectives, FBI agents, and witnesses, videotaped confessions, and court records, The Birthday Party reads like a thriller-but every word is true.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Very disappointing
After hearing a great interview with the author on NPR, I ordered the book anticipating a great read. I'm sorry to say that I was sorely disappointed. The narrative drags, the protagonist's whining description of his predicament did not bring the natural empathy that the story surely deserves. His portrayal of his abductors never goes beyond the level of stick figure drawings and are filled with superficial stereotypes. I would recommend passing this one up.
Rating:  - Starts Strong, Slow in the Middle
I was eager to read this book after hearing an interview with Stanley on the radio. After getting through the initial kidnapping and the first couple of hours he spent with the thugs, the book drags a bit. I commend Stanley for what he went through and how he survived this terrible ordeal and I mean no dissrespect at all to him, but the book was just a little dull for me. Granted, Stanley is a lawyer, but much of the legalistic writing in the later chapters tend to run together. Great, intriguing ... Read More
Rating: - borrow it
others have used the words "annoyingly arrogant and apparently editor-less man" and i totally agree. how insecure must he be to continually bring up his wannabe dating habits? and if i was that lisa woman, i'd be pissed that he continually kept writing her full name, including middle initial. jerk. borrow this book from the library.
Rating: - An unbelievably true story
From the minute you pick up this book, you cannot put it down! The Birthday Party is about a most extraordinary tale of the kidnapping of a US Attorney the day before his birthday, and the events so bizarre, that it couldn't be anything but true. Stan is an instantly likeable character who is enjoying an ordinary evening in Manhattan, when in an instant his world is turned upside down as he faces the barrel of a gun and the reader is immersed at once in the story of his captivity at the hands of his ... Read More
Rating:  - Required Reading
Fast-paced thriller! You can't put it down because you must know what happened next.
Tremendously detailed account by the victim/author. Fabulously told.
Pure New York City.
There are lessons to be learned in this book, particularly if you live in a big city.
Must read!
Related Categories:
| |
 |
