Best Intentions or Prisoner without a Name Cell without a Number

Best Intentions: The Education and Killing of Edmund Perry

Author: Robert Sam Anson

An exploration of how Edmund Perry, a 17 year old black honors student from Harlem, was killed soon after graduation by a young white plain clothes policeman in an alleged mugging attempt.

Publishers Weekly

The fatal shooting of 17-year-old Edmund Perry by New York City police officer Lee Van Houten in June of 1985 drew national headlines. The officer asserted that he was mugged by Perry and another black youth near Harlem. Subsequently, Edmund's brother Jonah, a Cornell undergraduate, was accused of being the second participant, tried and found not guilty. The case created controversy among blacks and whites alike, for the Perry brothers, raised in the ghetto, were educated at private schools; Edmund, graduated from Philips Exeter, was to attend Stanford University that fall. Anson (Exile, etc.) probes the problems that attended the uprooting of the brothers from a deprived background to the upper-class environment of their schools; and he raises questions as to whether the worlds of black and white in the U.S. are capable of reconciliation. In a profound and disturbing study Anson reaches a troubling conclusion about this case: ``The only villain I had found was something amorphous, not a person or a thing, just a difference called race. It was racenot the fact of it, but the consequences flowing from it . . . '' that relegated the slain Edmund, for one, to the ethics of the street. Photos not seen by PW. Author tour. (May 20)

Library Journal

Journalist Anson has written a compelling account of the life and death of a Harlem teenager. This black adolescent was different, however. He was a graduate of Phillips Exeter Prep School and had been admitted to Stanford University. When he was killed by a white policeman during an alleged mugging attempt in 1985, public reaction, especially among blacks, blamed the police for yet another needless murder of a young black man, in this case a kind of ``black hope.'' Anson uncovered a much more complex story. Perry was trapped between two worldsthe upper-class, high-expectation milieu of Exeter and the ``streets'' of Harlem. He sold drugs at Exeter and tried to fit into Harlem, in part with street crime. Anson tells this tragic story with great empathy. Highly recommended for most libraries. Anthony O. Edmonds, History Dept., Ball State Univ., Muncie, Ind.

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Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number

Author: Jacobo Timerman

The Americas, Ilan Stavans, Series Editor

Winner of a 1982 Los Angeles Times Book Prize

Selected by the New York Times for "Books of the Century"

With a new introduction by Ilan Stavans and a new foreword by Arthur Miller.

Author Biography: Jacobo Timerman (1923-1999) was born in the Ukraine, moved with his family to Argentina in 1928, and was deported to Israel in 1980. He returned to Argentina in 1984. Founder of two Argentine weekly newsmagazines in the 1960s and a commentator on radio and television, he was best-known as the publisher and editor of the newspaper La Opinión from 1971 until his arrest in 1977. An outspoken champion of human rights and freedom of the press, he criticized all repressive governments and organizations, regardless of their political ideologies. His other books include The Longest War: Israel in Lebanon; Cuba: A Journey; and Chile: A Death in the South.

Charles McGrath

....gripping in its human stories, not only of brutality but of courage and love. -- The New York Times Books of the Century