On February 4, 1974, Patty Hearst, a sophomore in college and heiress to the Hearst family fortune, was kidnapped by a ragtag group of self-styled revolutionaries calling itself the Symbionese Liberation Army. The already sensational story took the first of many incredible twists on April 3, when the group released a tape of Patty saying she had joined the SLA and had adopted the nom de guerre "Tania." The Hearst family tried to secure Patty's release by feeding all the people of Oakland and San Francisco for free. Bank security cameras captured "Tania" wielding a machine gun during a bank robbery. The story features a cast of characters including everyone from Bill Walton to the Black Panthers to Ronald Reagan to F. Lee Bailey; and the largest police shoot-out in American history. It was the first breaking news event to be broadcast live on television stations across the country. Patty's year on the lam, running from authorities; and her circuslike trial, filled with theatrical courtroom confrontations and a dramatic last-minute reversal, after which the term "Stockholm syndrome" entered the lexicon. The author thrillingly recounts the craziness of the times, the lunacy of the half-baked radicals of the SLA and the toxic mix of sex, politics, and violence that filled Patty Hearst's melodramatic trial. American Heiress examines the life of a young woman who suffered an unimaginable trauma and then made the stunning decision to join her captors' crusade. Or did she?