We Keep the Dead Close by Becky Cooper
Dive into an exhilirating true crime narrative of an unsolved 1969 murder at Harvard and an obsession and love for a girl who dreamt of rising among men."A tour de force of investigative reporting." --Ron Chernow, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Alexander Hamilton
"Exhilarating and seductive." --Ariel Levy, New York Times bestselling author of The Rules Do Not Apply
You have to remember, he reminded me, that Harvard is older than the U.S. government. You have to remember because Harvard doesn't let you forget.
1969: the height of counterculture and the year universities would seek to curb the unruly spectacle of student protest; the winter that Harvard University would begin the tumultuous process of merging with Radcliffe, its all-female sister school; and the year that Jane Britton, an ambitious twenty-three-year-old graduate student in Harvard's Anthropology Department and daughter of Radcliffe Vice President J. Boyd Britton, would be found bludgeoned to death in her Cambridge, Massachusetts apartment.
Forty years later, Becky Cooper a curious undergrad, will hear the first whispers of the story. In the first telling the body was nameless. The story was this: a Harvard student had had an affair with her professor, and the professor had murdered her in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology because she'd threatened to talk about the affair. Though the rumor proves false, the story that unfolds, one that Cooper will follow for ten years, is even more complex: a tale of gender inequality in academia, a 'cowboy culture' among empowered male elites, the silencing effect of institutions, and our compulsion to rewrite the stories of female victims.
We Keep the Dead Close is a memoir of mirrors, misogyny, and murder. It is at once a rumination on the violence and oppression that rules our revered institutions, a ghost story reflecting one young woman's past onto another's present, and a love story for a girl who was lost to history.
FINALIST FOR THE J. ANTHONY LUKAS BOOK PRIZE
FINALIST FOR THE ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Named One of The Best Books of 2020 by NPR's Fresh Air * Publishers Weekly * Marie Claire * Redbook * Vogue * Kirkus Reviews * Book Riot * Bustle
A Recommended Book by The New York Times * The Washington Post * Booklist * The Boston Globe * Amazon * Goodreads * Buzzfeed * Town & Country * Refinery29 * BookRiot * CrimeReads * Glamour * Popsugar * PureWow * Shondaland
Becky Cooper is a Senior Fellow at Brandeis University's Schuster Center for Investigative Reporting and a former member of the New Yorker editorial team. Her undergraduate thesis, a literary biography of David Foster Wallace, received the Hoopes Prize, Harvard's highest undergraduate research and writing prize. The Fund for Investigative Journalism and the International Women's Media Foundation's Howard G. Johnson Fellowship financed research for this book. The Warren Buffett Foundation for Women Journalists was established by Warren Buffett. Mapping Manhattan: A Love (and Occasionally Hate) Story in Maps by 75 New Yorkers (Abrams, 2013) is another her book.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781538746851 |
| ISBN 10 | 1538746859 |
| Title | We Keep the Dead Close |
| Author | Becky Cooper |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Grand Central Publishing |
| Year published | 2021-09-14 |
| Number of pages | 528 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |