by Ronan Farrow
Read by the author
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Content: This book is about sexual predators, and Farrow doesn’t pull back from descriptions of sexual harassment, assault, and rape. It’s not prurient and it’s not graphic, but it may be triggering. There is also swearing, including multiple f-bombs. It’s in the True Crime section of the bookstore.

I heard a story about this book somewhere, in a report about the Harvey Weinstein trial. The report said that they were having trouble finding neutral jurors, mostly because so many of them had read this book and had already made up their minds about Weinstein.

And they’re right. You come out of this book knowing that not only is Weinstein and evil man, every single person, corporation, or entity that protected him and enabled him (and other predators, like Matt Lauer) are also completely and totally corrupt.

This book is Farrow’s story about getting his 2017 New Yorker article about Harvey Weinstein published. See, it didn’t start out as a New Yorker article; Farrow was an on-air reporter at NBC news when he first started looking at leads and conducting interviews about Weinstein’s history of sexual predation. Farrow interviewed several women, corroborated their stories, and was set to put something on air, when NBC pulled it. It goes deeper than that: Weinstein had private investigators tailing Farrow, looking for dirt that he could use to kill the story. NBC has its own history of talent and others harassing, abusing, and raping women in vulnerable positions. It all adds up to not only a toxic male culture, but one in which I end up mistrusting corporate journalism. I don’t blame the journalists — Farrow (and others) did his job to the best of his ability. But, at many points, his bosses were telling him to cancel interviews and tried incredibly hard to kill the story, and if Farrow hadn’t 1) been a male and 2) he hadn’t had a couple people on his side urging him to keep going. It’s so easy for corporations and advertisers and powerful individuals to kill stories they don’t like.

It wasn’t an easy book to listen to because of the subject matter, but Farrow was a compelling writer and an excellent narrator. I know it sounds odd to say I enjoyed every minute of this, but I really did. I kept wanting to know what happened next, and Farrow’s narration kept me engaged.

It’s not only an important book, it’s a good one.