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Absolute Convictions
Eyal Press
My Father, a City, and the Conflict that Divided America
Henry Holt
February 2006
304 pages ISBN: 0805077316 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
On October 23, 1998, the Buffalo abortion provider Barnett
Slepian was killed by a sniper's bullet fired through the
kitchen window of his home. Days later, police informed
another local doctor, Shalom Press, that they had received a
threat warning that he was "next on the list." Within hours
the Press household was under twenty-four-hour federal
marshal protection. America's violent struggle over abortion
-- which had already claimed the lives of five doctors and
clinic workers -- had come to Buffalo.
In Absolute Convictions, Eyal Press returns to his
hometown seeking to understand how an issue many people
thought was settled decades ago could inspire such rage.
Press combines a retelling of his family's experience with
firsthand accounts of protesters arrested outside his
father's office, patients who braved the gauntlet of
demonstrators, and politicians who attempted to appease both
sides. Through the Press family and the city of Buffalo, a
blue-collar town undergoing wrenching economic changes, we
see, as never before, the people behind the absolute
convictions that have divided our nation for the past three
decades. With remarkable sensitivity, Press has written both a
gripping narrative account of a family and a city caught in
the crossfire of moral fervor and individual rights, and an
incisive history that offers new insight into the economic
and social roots of America's most volatile conflict.
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