I Would Rather Be Reading

Death on the Fourth of July is subtitled “the Story of a Killing, a Trial, and Hate Crime in America.” Were this the case, I think I would have enjoyed this book much more. Unfortunately, however, the book is much more about the author proselytizing about his position on hate crimes and their enforcement, or lack thereof, throughout the country.

Ostensibly, the book is about a death that occurred over the fourth of July holiday in 200o in Ocean Shores, Washington. Although I enjoy reading true crime books, this book is probably not one I would have picked up normally. However, I could not pass up the conincidental fact that I stumbled across this book just before I left on a trip to visit Ocean Shores. I simply couldn’t pass up the opportunity to read a true crime book at the same time that I was visiting the location where the crime occurred.

There are two parts to this book. One part tells the story of an Asian American man who killed a young white man who had been shouting racial slurs at him. This part provides background information on the event and covers the subsequent trial. This part was well-written and interesting. Unfortunately, it seemed as though this was a small part of the book. I don’t know exactly how much of the book was devoted to this story, however, it seemed like it was equivilent to a lengthy feature story in a magazine.

The second part of the book dealt with the history, nature, and enforcement of hate crime laws. Although parts of this book were interesting and although the author made a few good points, this part of the book suffered from a very bad case of repeatition. In multiple instances, the author repeated the same facts and arguments, several times. This part of the book could have used the stern hand of a good editor. Additionally, it went beyond the normal exposition that I expect to find in such a book and entered the realm of strongly advocating the enactment and enforcement of hate crimes laws.

Put simply, this wasn’t what I expected from the book. Had the book been described as a advocacy piece on hate crime enforcement that was illuminated by an examination of the fourth of July incident in Ocean Shores, then I would not have been surprised by what I read. As it was, however, I felt that I did not get what I expected.

If you are interested, you can find the book here:

The book is also available in a Kindle edition:

I read the Kindle edition of the book and I cannot end this review without addressing the problems with the Kindle edition. Like many non fiction books, this book contained endnotes. For reasons that make absolutely no sense to me, there were no hyperlinks to connect the endnote reference in the text to the actual endnotes. This absence is simply inexcusable. One of the great benefits of having an electronic edition of a book is the ability to leverage the electronic features, such as hyperlinks.

Additionally, the book also contains an index. However, on the Kindle, the index is absolutely useless. The text is small and, for reasons I don’t understand, the publisher did not bother to reformat the index so it can be read on the Kindle.

Stated simply, this is a poor implementation of an electronic book and I hope that future Kindle books that I purchase do not suffer from these same problems.