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Unfortunately, by telling parts of his story through articles from the contemporary press -- at a time when the media frenzy was at its height -- the author of this ‘definitive” account succeeds most at breathing new life into some early misconceptions and distortions. In 2006 the Duke lacrosse team held party to compensate for missing Spring Break. The co-captains decided to hire strippers; some attendees (including two who were later charged in the case) did not know there were going to be strippers until they were asked to contribute for their fees. The team had members who were teetotal, who were evangelical Christians; and some who attended the party but drank nothing. Cohan omits these last points -- critical, because the players were not typecast cartoons, but individuals. And while the book reproduces hype about the lacrosse team’s supposed high social status (BMOC) and reckless lifestyle, an article written months before the case, for Duke magazine, more accurately described the team as “largely unheard of and unheralded” on campus; and pointed out that their virtual anonymity was a boon to their academic studies. Both versions cannot be true; but one fits a comfortable stereotype. The book asserts that the three falsely-accused players received a settlement from Duke of around $60 million. This apparently is based on a claim that player Seligmann was delinquent in his taxes to the tune of $6 million. However, the tax claim was demonstrated by bloggers to be bogus (and either a fraud or a hoax) within hours of its becoming news. The actual sum received by the players has been reasonably guessed to have been less than a third of that. The book glaringly omits any mention of Durham’s police chief, Steve Chalmers. The chief absented himself for months during the biggest case in Durham’s history (leaving the field to Nifong). Nifong arrested his daughter on an old warrant, which could have resulted in prison time. Was there a connection? The book doesn’t examine this. Nifong arrested Mangum’s ex-husband, boyfriend, and another friend, with the disposition of their own separate cases in his hands. He worked a sweetheart deal with the second dancer at the party, after which she ‘remembered’ that, contrary to her previous statements, there might have been time for a rape after all. He arrested and tried on trumped-up charges the immigrant cabbie Elmostafa, after Elmostafa refused to change his testimony and lie for the prosecution. The book recounts the conviction of player Finnerty on an assault charge in Washington, D.C., but lacks any discussion that perhaps Finnerty, also, was the target of witness intimidation. By Finnerty’s account he was the victim in a street altercation some months before; he was stuck from behind and knocked down while trying to separate two quarrelers. Five witnesses backed Finnerty’s version of events. For his relatively minor misdemeanor trial the government mustered seventeen federal staff and attorneys. The judge refused to let the chief defense witness testify, police suddenly remembered new “facts” which were not in their notes, and Finnerty was given a 90 day suspended jail sentence (even though it was conceded he hadn’t struck anyone). By relying on contemporary media accounts, the book presents only a distorted version of these events. Thereafter Finnerty was constantly harassed by the judge with threats of being committed to the DC jail -- rated worse than many federal prisons. The threat is the same one made to some Watergate defendants and to the brother of James Earl Ray when he wouldn’t testify the way the government wanted. To many observers it seemed as if Finnerty’s troubles might be made to disappear if he would agree to turn and testify for Nifong. Once more, the book lacks analysis of this. But if his refusal to bail to save his own skin is indicative of character, then Cohan errs when he chooses to present instead an excerpt from a contemporary opinion piece that pondered whether the player--described elsewhere as shy and pacific -- might really have a Jekyll-Hyde personality, revealed when he was under the influence of the book’s main boogeyman, alcohol. Again, it is the stereotype and the pop narrative which triumphs over objectivity. But perhaps the defendant who comes in for the worst treatment is David Evans. Evans is the only player who can be placed in the house at the time of the alleged rape (the other two can prove they were miles away, with witnesses, documents, photos, phone calls, and time stamps). The narrative spun in the book by Nifong and Mangum casts a web of suspicion by innuendo. Doubt is raised over whether possible DNA matches with Evans on some discarded fake fingernails left by Mangum, and on a towel in his bathroom, might indicate participation in an assault. But it would hardly be surprising if Evans’ DNA was found on items tossed in his own trashcan, or on a towel in his bathroom. (The ‘towel’ story first surfaced when all other attempts at finding the DNA of any lacrosse player proved fruitless; then it was suggested that maybe Evans had wiped off Mangum after the crime; but the lack of her DNA on the towel evaporated that theory. For this book, it seems, the story appears again -- perhaps he wiped himself off. But this is merely a weak attempt to resurrect an old lie. Nothing exists -- nothing -- to give credence to assumptions that any kind of assault at all happened that night; the attempt to create doubt about the innocence of the falsely-accused at this point is lamentable, and more.) Robert K. Steel, then Duke’s Trustee Chair, is interviewed; but missing is any discussion of the allegation that Steel ordered Duke University police to alter their records so as to make the accused appear more guilty. He is also alleged to have explained Duke’s refusal to come to the defense its students, with a platitude: “Sometimes individuals have to suffer for the good of the organization.“ This merits comparison with Marraus’s remark about Dreyfus, “What does it matter if a Jew sits in prison, so long as the nation is not humiliated?“ Does Duke leadership have a moral blind spot? The book doesn’t say. The lacrosse case might have been a vehicle to examine prosecutorial abuse, the eroding of defendants’ rights, the dangers of media hype, and corporate obsession with putting a PR image before the truth; but not alcohol abuse or athletes run wild. The only crimes committed on March 13, 2006, were the lies told by Mangum. But as was said of Scottsboro in 1931, “If she [Victoria Price] lied about the rape, she had done so because she lived in a setting which encouraged and rewarded this monstrous lie.” (Dan Carter, “Scottsboro, a Tragedy of the American South“). Durham was just such a modern day tragedy. R. B. Parrish