The Birthday Party, Stanley N. Alpert
The Birthday Party, Stanley N. Alpert
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The Birthday Party
A Memoir of Survival

Author: Stanley N. Alpert

Narrator: Richard Powers

Unabridged: 10 hr 56 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/01/2009

Synopsis

On January 21, 1998, the night before his thirty-eighth birthday, federal prosecutor Stanley Alpert was kidnapped by a car full of gun-toting thugs. Hoping to make a large withdrawal with his ATM card, they took him, blindfolded, to a Brooklyn apartment, and improvised. All night, his captors alternately held guns to his head, threatened his family, engaged him in discussions of “gangsta” philosophy, sought his legal advice, and even offered him sexual favors from their prostitute girlfriends as a “birthday present.” As Alpert talked with them, played on their attitudes and fears, and memorized every detail he could, his law-enforcement colleagues launched a major police and FBI investigation that would take many strange twists and turns. Filled with immediacy, drama, and extraordinary characters, The Birthday Party reads like a thriller—but every word is true.

About Stanley N. Alpert

Stanley N. Alpert served for thirteen years with the US Department of Justice as an assistant US attorney for the eastern district of New York, where he was chief of environmental litigation. There, he investigated, prosecuted, or supervised many complex civil and criminal cases, some resulting in multimillion-dollar awards.

About Richard Powers

Richard Powers has published thirteen novels. He is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory, and Bewilderment was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Katherine

This book chronicles the random abduction of the author, then a federal prosecutor, his nearly 24 hours with the men who abducted him and tried to steal his money, and the subsequent investigation and arrests of those men. The book is riveting, particularly in the first half when Alpert is with his......more

Goodreads review by Sara

An Assistant U.S. Attorney is kidnapped at gunpoint from the streets of Manhattan on his birthday. The kidnappers aren't sure what to do with him and how to drain his bank accounts without getting caught, so they hold him blindfolded for 26 hours in a dingy apartment with guns, drugs and prostitutes......more

Goodreads review by Krystianna

The reason I gave this book 3 stars and not four was because I think he gave too many details of peoples lives that were irrelevant and made the story drag on.......more

Quotes

“[Alpert’s memoir is] well served by his litigator’s sense for dramatic pacing and telling detail. And throughout, Alpert wins over the reader the same way he did the kidnappers, with the force of his canny, self-assured, big-hearted personality.” New York Times Book Review

“[A] harrowing, often hilarious reconstruction of what should have been a garden-variety New York street crime…Precisely how this nebbishy Brooklyn boy, partial to peach-flavored Snapple iced tea and chocolate chip cookies, induced reverse Stockholm syndrome and maneuvered his way to freedom makes The Birthday Party one of the most exhilarating, improbable New York stories ever told.” New York Times

“Reading The Birthday Party is like watching a slow-motion train wreck—difficult to look at, but impossible to turn away from…The Birthday Party is a good read, but it is also an object lesson. We all need to pay attention to it.” Newsday

“Harrowing…Alpert delivers an unflinching look at the humiliating, terrifying role of the victim, lacing his plight with commentary on contemporary crime and the creaking judicial system. The second part reads as compellingly as the first and with every bit as much suspense. An effective, one-two punch of a memoir.” Booklist

“Tartly written…An honest, vivid chronicle of the suspenseful event.” Publishers Weekly

“Practically a textbook outlining how to behave in a similar situation. Stark and honest.” Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Awards

  • Edgar Allan Poe Award
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