A major new study of Manson's crimes places this notorious criminal case at a pivotal moment in history.
In August 1969, members of the “family” of Charles Manson, the charismatic leader of a countercultural cult, murdered some of Hollywood’s “beauties,” most famously Sharon Tate, who was eight and a half months pregnant at the time. The killers left behind evidence intended to implicate black extremists and spark a disastrous race war.What happened instead was that the gruesome murders put the entire counterculture under suspicion and became, in Joan Didion's words, the end of the 1960s. Since then, these crimes have become a cornerstone of true crime literature.
Drawing on newly published archival material from trial transcripts, Love and Terror recasts the Manson case into a model for historical scholarship. The book shows how the popular account of the murders was told as it was told.In place of this well-worn narrative, Claudia Verhoeven offers a multi-faceted history, centered around a more bizarre portrait of Manson, the man who became the ultimate murder mastermind of American legend.
Based on years of investigative research, Love and Terror rewrites Manson's crimes as a prism of American culture, an event framed by global avant-garde movements and revolutionary violence, and an early sign of our era of spectacle.
