This one was well reported if a little repetitive. Great reporting in a just the facts way. It would have been higher rating had the author told the story as a story rather than a bare collection of fact which is what it felt like! As always thank you to net galley for the arc.

As someone who has lived in NYC their whole lives of course I wanted to know more about this book. I was genuinely shocked about all of the stuff that I didn’t know. I asked my mom who was old enough to remember some of the things in the book and she said she had no clue about them either. Very well written and very interesting. For those that love to know more about the history of places or things that happened that aren’t in textbooks this is definitely the book for you.

I listened to the audiobook, so I can't speak to how well cited Viola's facts are, but I thought his use of primary sources flowed beautifully in and out of his analysis. I was surprised that in the end Viola doesn't take a stronger stance on whether the civil liberties vs intel gathering debate as it relates to terrorism, given that he's an expert in the field. I thought it was so clever how he connected big historical events one doesn't usually associate with activists or violent demonstrations of the 1970s -- like how it impacted Watergate and 9/11. It put things in a larger perspective of why the debate matters, because it's still ongoing, and it will always be something we have to tinker with as our needs for security and our willingness to give up privacy ebb and flow.