This is the book on which the excellent Netflix docu-drama about the Trial of the Chicago 7 is based, and I wanted to read it after watching that film (highly recommended). While the book is informative, it does not provide much more detail or depth than you could glean from watching the movie or living through the events and reading daily news reports (as I did).

The book begins with a brief introduction including thumbnail sketches of the major players, as well as a very brief sketch of the time period--1969--to provide context: the anti-war movement, the Black Panthers, the youth counter-culture, etc. There is a chronology of the 4 days of the Democratic Convention over which the alleged "riots" took place, and a longer, although barebones, chronology of the major events of 1967-75, including the trial, the appeals, the course of the Vietnam War, and Watergate. We also learn what happened to each of the defendants after the trial.

The bulk of the book consists of verbatim excerpts from the transcript of the trial. This is only about 190 pages out of about 22,000 pages of trial transcript. Most of the excerpts are short snippets of some of the more lurid and/or egregious events during the trial. Nevertheless, these excerpts make for very interesting reading, and there's quite a bit that wasn't included in the film. Many celebrities, including Judy Collins, Allen Ginsberg, Arlo Guthrie and Norman Mailer testified.

To be clear, the book is exactly what is is advertised to be: a limited but accurate description of the parties involved, a description of the context in which the trial took place, including the legal issues at stake, and excerpts giving a feel for what went on during the trial. Nothing stellar or exceptional here, but it does the job.

3 stars ( )