Sunday, March 21, 2010

Five best books on scandals

Henry E. Scott's Shocking True Story: The Rise and Fall of Confidential, "America's Scandalous Scandal Magazine" was recently published by Pantheon.

He named his five favorite books on scandals for the Wall Street Journal. One book on the list:
A Gospel of Shame
by Frank Bruni and Elinor Burkett

"A Gospel of Shame" is a disturbing account of religious scandal. New York Times reporter Frank Bruni and magazine writer Elinor Burkett put the reader in parochial-school classrooms and vividly conjure the terror felt by children subjected to gropings and worse by the priests who were supposed to be their moral shepherds. Bruni and Burkett also document the now well-known conspiracy by the Catholic Church hierarchy to cover up the child-abuse scandals. "Shame" opens with the story of 40-year-old Frank Fitzpatrick's 1990 telephone call to Father James Porter, his childhood priest at St. Mary's Church in North Attleboro, Mass. Fitzpatrick confronts him: Why did Porter molest Fitzpatrick and other children? The priest replies: "Who knows?"—and laughs.
Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue