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  • In My Father's House

  • A New View of How Crime Runs in the Family
  • Written by: Fox Butterfield
  • Narrated by: Paul Michael
  • Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
  • 3.5 out of 5 stars (4 ratings)

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In My Father's House

Written by: Fox Butterfield
Narrated by: Paul Michael
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Publisher's Summary

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist: a pathbreaking examination of our huge crime and incarceration problem that looks at the influence of the family - specifically one Oregon family with a generations-long legacy of lawlessness.

The US currently holds the distinction of housing nearly one-quarter of the world's prison population. But our reliance on mass incarceration, Fox Butterfield argues, misses the intractable reality: As few as five percent of families account for half of all crime, and only 10 percent account for two-thirds. 

In introducing us to the Bogle family, the author invites us to understand crime in this eye-opening new light. He chronicles the malignant legacy of criminality passed from parents to children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren. 

Examining the long history of the Bogles, a white family, Butterfield offers a revelatory look at criminality that forces us to disentangle race from our ideas about crime and, in doing so, strikes at the heart of our deepest stereotypes. He makes clear how these new insights are leading to fundamentally different efforts at reform. 

With his empathic insight and profound knowledge of criminology, Butterfield offers us both the indelible tale of one family's transgressions and tribulations and an entirely new way to understand crime in America.

©2018 Fox Butterfield (P)2018 Random House Audio

What the critics say

"[In My Father’s House] sometimes unfolds like a novel.... It’s a riveting multiperson topic-specific biography - the characters and context are strongly drawn and the whole creates the feel of drama even though we pretty well know where the story is going - but it’s also an intriguing and sometimes disturbing deep dive into some powerful social dilemmas.” (Mickey Edwards, Los Angeles Times

“Part of the pleasure of the unseemly story Butterfield unspools is its universality.... The Bogles, Butterfield’s subject here, will ring familiar even if you’ve never personally known anyone like them...vivid.” (Alice B. Lloyd, The Weekly Standard

 
“Remarkably informative, inherently fascinating, impressively thoughtful and thought-provoking . . . an extraordinary and engaging read from beginning to end.” (Midwest Book Review

What listeners say about In My Father's House

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