Norco '80

By Peter Houlahan,

Book cover of Norco '80: The True Story of the Most Spectacular Bank Robbery in American History

Book description

5 young men. 32 destroyed police vehicles. 1 spectacular bank robbery. This “cinematic” true crime story transports readers to the scene of one of the most shocking bank heists in U.S. history―a crime that’s almost too wild to be real (The New York Times Book Review).

Norco ’80 tells the…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Norco '80 as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Norco '80 is the kind of book that sticks with you long after you’ve finished reading it.

Peter Houlahan captures late 1970s Southern California in all its strangeness and gives a blow-by-blow account of one of America’s wildest bank robberies with perfect pacing that continues to ratchet up the action page after page. The shockingly violent robbery by five landscapers whose leader was an apocalyptic born-again Christian reshaped American law enforcement.

And we’re still feeling the aftereffects more than forty years later in the form of militarized police forces across the country. It’s a book that will keep…

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Grand Old Unraveling By John Kenneth White,

It didn’t begin with Donald Trump. When the Republican Party lost five straight presidential elections during the 1930s and 1940s, three things happened: (1) Republicans came to believe that presidential elections are rigged; (2) Conspiracy theories arose and were believed; and (3) The presidency was elevated to cult-like status.

Long…

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