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Rating: 
Summary: not the kind of reporting you might expect
Review: Dian Temple-Raston waited until the furor died down a bit to examine the Texas town of Jaspar and how conditions there led to the brutal hate crime perpetrated against James Byrd. I worked for a newspaper in Little Rock, Arkansas a number of years back and never fully believed the myth of a new South. Racism and hate are alive and well in places like Jaspar, just as they are alive and well in places all over this country. By going in directions that took her off the well-marked path of the pack of reporters who descended on the town after Mr. Byrd was dragged to death by the back of a pickup truck, the author succeeds in getting at the essence of a small Southern town that remains a place of venom and poison for people of color or different sexual orientation -- even if the affront to liberty and choice are not acted out on a daily basis. She helps expose one of the great myths in America: that somehow racism and hatred are less of a problem today because laws have been passed and we like to think of ourselves as more tolerant and open than the generations that came before us. This is an important book, well researched and written and one that deserves a wide audience.
Rating: 
Summary: Real Life in the South
Review: Dina Temple-Raston has written a real page-turner. I could barely put this book down. It is well written and a succinct portrait of the Deep East Texas woods and life in a small East Texas city. That the town of Jasper was so highlighted by the acts of "three no 'count white boys and one no 'count ..... is tragic. Those who had no stake in the town, except for personel profit, (read the author), took from the town the last modicum of dignity. The Klan, the Panthers, Jesse Jackson, Quannel X, and especially the media...the whole bunch of them simply left Jasper lying in the dust, as bloody and broken as James Byrd, Jr.
Rating: 
Summary: Shawn Berry
Review: I've known Shawn Berry all of my life as he is best friends with my cousin. We all grew up together going to the rodeos and watching Shawn bull-ride and seeing him at my cousins' daughters christening as he became her God-Father, I can't begin to explain how so many people look down on him for what happened. I have personally talked to Shawn and got his recollection of what happened that night and it seems as though no authors of books or producers/screen-writers of movies have. Shawn is a great guy and always will be. His fiance was one of his attorneys and she still stands by him that he will one day get to see their daughter grow up outside of the bars that he lives behind everyday. I just wanted everyone to know that Shawn did do wrong that night but not in the way everyone thinks. He literally DID have a gun to his head and was told he could die to. No one can say what they would have done in that situation. NO ONE. The Byrd family has visited Shawn in prison and he got down on his knees and begged forgiveness and they gave it to him. Shawn always gave James a ride home and was friends with him and his family. There are things about James Byrd that no one knows but I will not talk bad of the deceased. I just wanted people to know that things aren't always as they seem. Jasper is a small town and always will be in the backs of peoples minds in the US now but it's not as bad as Vidor.
Rating:
Summary: The hate that hate made.
Review: If you thought you knew just about everything there was to know about this horrible crime then you are probably in for a rude awakening. To say that Dina Temple-Raston's research of this crime and the background information is thorough is a major understatement. If you read this book, you will come aways a virtual expert on this incident, and the major players involved. The book is so complete that I couldn't imagine another book coming along presenting anything new, unless it was an update after this book was published. She begins her book simply enough with the discovery of James Byrd's body. You immediately get the feeling of a fuze being lit on a bomb as the word of mouth starts to carry through the entire community. She succinctly traces how the news is passed from citizen to citizen about the torn up body of a black man that has yet to be identified. After the initial discovery, collecting of evidence, and the eventual identification, she then begins to explore the mulitple paths and dimensions that are at first seem very unrelated, but are drawn together in a way that keeps you turning from one chapter to the next. She explores the make-up of Jasper, and its history. Nothing is left out as she goes way back in the past almost to the beginnings of settlement, and explains how prominent families got their fame, how the lumbering industry helped the town grow, and how earlier racial conflicts affected this part of Texas and this town in particular. Fading back to the present we go into the interesting backgrounds of the major players in this sad saga. Interviews, quotes, and background of the most important people are at the heart of this book: members of James Byrd's family, the Sheriff, the minister crucial in the black community, and the perpetrator's family members. However, an added plus are the interviews and perspectives of the seemingly not so important people: the owners of the cafe/inn across from the courthouse, a local journalist, former employers of the perpetrators, etc. It is incredible how she takes the various opinions and perspectives including the very extremes with the Klu Klux Klan, and the New Black Panthers, and yet still weaves them into this tragic story without missing a beat or unduly breaking up the flow of the important sequential events. The murder is followed right through the trials, and the reader is not lacking for any details or other information. She ends her book not with the perpetrators, but appropriately in the community where it all started, and the future of the community - its children. We gain a sense of where the town might be headed from her by how she gives us a picture of the ways in which kids are dealing with this crime that threaten to divide the races even more. After reading this book with all its attention to detail, brute reality, humanism, and the strength of the good people pressing to rise beyond this tragedy which is felt so clearly, I cannot imagine this book being any better than it already is now.
Rating:
Summary: LIVING IN JASPER TEXAS
Review: Let's forget for a moment the author's blatant neglect for geography, personal description, or facts relating to the town. Let's put aside any consideration of whether her damn-the-torpedoes conjecture is at all founded in anything other than her own preconceived notions or whether its damaging slant is warranted. Let's look at it as what it is: a sleazy true-crime potboiler disguised as "responsible" journalism meant to sell like hotcakes to people who can look at it and self-righteously shake their heads at those poor, uneducated, backwoods hicks in that sad, underdeveloped little town. Whatever. The problem here is that she simply is a terrible writer. Never mind that she's irresponsible. She can't turn a sentence to save her life. And we have Morris Dees on the back cover comparing this tripe to In Cold Blood. Excuse me, Mr. Dees, have you *read* In Cold Blood? Dina Temple-Raston isn't fit to wash Truman Capote's feet. Do yourself a favor. If you feel you must read a single-person perspective of what happened in Jasper, try Hate Crime by Joyce King. At least she can write, and her point of view doesn't include a self-pandering arrogance and self-righteousness. Just avoid Temple-Raston's silly excuse for journalism at all costs.
Rating:
Summary: All Is Not As It Appears
Review: Naively, I expected "A Death in Texas" to be an indictment of a small Texas town that was thrust into the national spotlight as the unfortunate host of a hideous hate crime. Just the opposite, the book is about an event that changed the lives of everyone in Jasper, Texas, not only forcing a community to take a long hard look at itself, but pointing out that in trying times, unlikely heroes emerge. As the media and interest groups descended on Jasper in the summer of 1998, either bent on labeling the town as "racist" or using the tragic murder of James Byrd to hoist their own political agendas, the local sheriff and townspeople worked together to solve the crime, punish the guilty, and ultimately heal each other in the process. As expected, it will take years for Jasper to overcome this terrible tragedy, but one gets the hopeful feeling that Jasperites will somehow find a way to do it. Dina Temple-Raston has not only written a page-turner, but an important expose' on a town in crisis.
Rating:
Summary: All Is Not As It Appears
Review: Naively, I expected "A Death in Texas" to be an indictment of a small Texas town that was thrust into the national spotlight as the unfortunate host of a hideous hate crime. Just the opposite, the book is about an event that changed the lives of everyone in Jasper, Texas, not only forcing a community to take a long hard look at itself, but pointing out that in trying times, unlikely heroes emerge. As the media and interest groups descended on Jasper in the summer of 1998, either bent on labeling the town as "racist" or using the tragic murder of James Byrd to hoist their own political agendas, the local sheriff and townspeople worked together to solve the crime, punish the guilty, and ultimately heal each other in the process. As expected, it will take years for Jasper to overcome this terrible tragedy, but one gets the hopeful feeling that Jasperites will somehow find a way to do it. Dina Temple-Raston has not only written a page-turner, but an important expose' on a town in crisis.
Rating:
Summary: Hate devours the Soul
Review: This should be read by all Americans. Racial hatred needs to be erased from our minds so it doesn't do to us what it did to these men. The book is ok - it would have been better had it not repeated itself over and over. I felt like I read the same book five times. Could have been much shorter.
Rating:
Summary: Hate devours the Soul
Review: This should be read by all Americans. Racial hatred needs to be erased from our minds so it doesn't do to us what it did to these men. The book is ok - it would have been better had it not repeated itself over and over. I felt like I read the same book five times. Could have been much shorter.
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