Sarah Weinman
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sarahweinman.com
Sarah Weinman
@sarahweinman.com
26K followers 530 following 11K posts
Crime Lady. NYT Crime & Mystery columnist. Latest Book: WITHOUT CONSENT. Author, SCOUNDREL, THE REAL LOLITA. Editor, UNSPEAKABLE ACTS and EVIDENCE OF THINGS SEEN.

http://www.linktr.ee/sarahweinman
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sarahweinman.com
uhhhhhh
My lovely wife asked some 60 Minutes producers to report out a story a little more, literally Hey guys make a couple more phone calls and then we’ll run the piece in a week or two,” Ms. Bowles wrote. “No! the media collectively shrieked. We shan’t!” (CBS News declined to make Ms. Weiss available for an interview. Referring to Ms. Bowles’s column, Ms. Weiss said in a statement that The Free Press was “completely editorially independent,” and added, “Also: My wife is the funniest writer in America.”)
January 13, 2026 at 1:18 PM
sarahweinman.com
Bloop www.cjh.org/about/press-...
Center for Jewish History Announces $25 Million Fund from Neri Oxman and Bill Ackman New York, NY (December 11, 2025) With Hanukkah approaching, a holiday that celebrates resilience, courage, and the triumph of light over darkness, the Center for Jewish History announces a $25 million fund to be created for the benefit of the Center by longtime leader and former Board Chair Bill Ackman and Neri Oxman.
January 11, 2026 at 2:11 PM
sarahweinman.com
Today’s “living in my brain rent-free” paragraph www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/b...
I know a woman, a successful writer, whose husband left her abruptly, and as he walked out the door he said with an eager, flashing little smile, “Someday you can write a whole book about me.” And she sat there and thought to herself: I wouldn’t waste a minute of my life honoring that man with my craft.
January 11, 2026 at 1:41 PM
sarahweinman.com
Only one we accept
Cover of GONE BAMBOO by Anthony Bourdain, a wonderful crime novel he wrote in the late 1990s (though my fave is still THE BOBBY GOLD STORIES)
January 9, 2026 at 2:25 AM
sarahweinman.com
Meanwhile, in 2025 news
In Plain Sight (Exclusive.) Ryan Lizza is expected to publish the final installment in his Olivia Nuzzi bamboo series in the next 24 hours. The final chapter will be the ninth in the tell-all series about the backstory to the messy public breakup of the former D.C. power couple. Meanwhile, Lizza will appear on the Semafor podcast Mixed Signals with Ben Smith and Maxi Tani tomorrow…
January 9, 2026 at 1:42 AM
sarahweinman.com
Stumbled into this excellent movie poster exhibition the other day at Chelsea Market www.chelseamarket.com/events-all/a...
The Anatomy of a Movie Poster: The Work of Dawn Baillie at Chelsea Market (through February 18th) 3 movie posters for THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991)
January 7, 2026 at 1:17 AM
sarahweinman.com
Here he is with Vladimir Horowitz and Walt Disney in 1942
From left: Sergei Rachmaninoff, Walt Disney, Vladimir Horowitz, 1942.
January 4, 2026 at 7:23 PM
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Who could have foreseen
American Racist A Q&A with Kevin MacDonald, the country’s most influential white identitarian ideologue BY DAVID SAMUELS JUNE 11, 2020
January 2, 2026 at 3:45 PM
sarahweinman.com
In hindsight this exchange I had with Toobin in 2016 (about his Patty Hearst book) was a little too instructive hazlitt.net/feature/what...
I had a question about your research methods, namely about the trove of documents you obtained from SLA member Bill Harris. You devote, understandably, a fair amount of space to this in the acknowledgments section. Was there ambivalence on your part about how you obtained the documents, and how satisfied are you that it's journalistically okay? I reached out to Bill Harris and found to my surprise that Bill, who is very much a pack rat, had been assembling every doc he could find about the SLA, including court records in every trial involving the SLA. All of the discovery, FBI interviews ... just an enormous amount of material. As he explained it to me, he had a deal to sell it to a university library that had fallen through. So I bought [his archive] instead. When I'm finished with it, which I hope will be soon, once I deal with some logistical challenges, I will donate it all to Harvard Law School, which holds my archive. So do you see this transaction on par with paying a state or federal agency for court records? I don't want to belabour the point, but... No, that's a fair question. I'm well aware of ethical prohibitions on not paying for interviews, and I have observed [them] throughout my career. Documents, physical objects, and photos are another matter. Paying for those things is something people do. These documents clearly had a monetary value, and I paid for them. The end result is that I think, once the documents are readily available, I will be contributing to the broader history of the 1970s.
December 29, 2025 at 4:39 PM
sarahweinman.com
I love that @shelf-awareness.com called WITHOUT CONSENT "riveting and righteous": www.shelf-awareness.com/sar-issue.ht... (And as for not writing "feel-good books"....never say never!)
Without Consent: A Landmark Trial and the Decades-Long Struggle to Make Spousal Rape a Crime by Sarah Weinman Sarah Weinman (The Real Lolita; Unspeakable Acts), an avatar of literary true-crime writing, doesn't do feel-good books. But with the riveting and righteous Without Consent: A Landmark Trial and the Decades-Long Struggle to Make Spousal Rape a Crime, she leaves readers with something unexpected: a glimmer of faith in the criminal justice system. Without Consent begins with the story of Greta Rideout, who was raped by her husband, John, in front of the Oregon couple's two-year-old daughter in 1978. At the time, only three states besides Oregon--Iowa, Delaware, and Nebraska--had laws against spousal rape; generally speaking, the idea was that marriage, as Weinman puts it, "implied a state of perpetual consent." When Rideout became the first Oregonian to bring rape charges against her spouse, she couldn't have known that the case would spark a media circus, take on an international profile, inspire a made-for-TV movie, and, per Weinman, "lead to one of the most successful activism campaigns in America." That campaign had some setbacks alongside its legislative victories, and Weinman manages to turn each account into a taut courtroom drama. Without Consent has its share of noble warriors, among them advocates for the victims, but the true heroes are the plaintiffs, two of whom consented to interviews with Weinman that she recaps heartbreakingly here. Thanks to these and other brave women, spousal rape was a crime "to varying degrees" in all 50 states by 1993, but it was not a federal crime as Without Consent went to press, Weinman reports. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer Discover: Sarah Weinman builds taut courtroom dramas out of the legislative victories and setbacks that eventually resulted in spousal rape becoming a crime in all 50 U.S. states.
December 28, 2025 at 4:04 PM
sarahweinman.com
post a perfect album from the 90s that isn't nirvana, pearl jam, soundgarden, or Alice In Chains

I can also sing this one all the way through by heart pretty much
Album cover for FUMBLING TOWARDS ECSTASY by Sarah McLachlan (1993)
December 28, 2025 at 3:11 PM
sarahweinman.com
Please enjoy this random 1997 photo of Roger & Chaz Ebert and Donald & Abby Westlake singing karaoke on a cruise ship
Caption reads: Film critic Roger Ebert (far left) sings karaoke with, from far left: George Anthony, his wife, Chaz Hammelsmith Ebert, Abby Westlake and author hubby Donald Westlake on the last film fest cruise
December 28, 2025 at 2:20 AM
sarahweinman.com
And yes, I did get a quote from Patterson Hood from the Drive-By Truckers, just a total delight to chat with.
judgment that if alive today, Buford Pusser would be indicted for the murder of his wife, more than 60 years of myth seems to be challenged. “I’m absolutely delighted that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation finally got onto it,” Wilson tells me. Patterson Hood, co-founder of the Drive-By Truckers, whose 2004 album, The Dirty South, included three songs puncturing the Pusser myth, is more pointed when I ask him about the new developments: “I said all along that he was a piece of shit!” Hood says. “It was also pretty common knowledge back in those days that he was no better than the people he was fighting — and maybe even worse, because he had a badge and that made him extra powerful.”
December 23, 2025 at 3:20 PM
sarahweinman.com
I also could not have written the piece without talking to Cammy Wilson, a young Mississippi journalist in the Midwest who wrote the truth back in 1973, which Pusser was none too happy about. When I traveled to McNairy County, it was her footsteps I tried best to follow.
Cammy Wilson, 1969. Cammy Wilson, 2010s.
December 23, 2025 at 3:16 PM
sarahweinman.com
John Boehner and Barack Obama at a movie theater, both with bags of popcorn and smiling
December 17, 2025 at 3:21 PM
sarahweinman.com
Shit abc7.com/post/2-found...
LAPD sources told ABC News that police initially began a death investigation that later developed into a murder case, adding that property records show the house belongs to Reiner. The LAPD's Robbery-Homicide Division is leading the investigation, and the department's senior leadership is responding to the scene. According to a neighbor, actors Billy Crystal and Larry David arrived separately at the home after police. The two comedians stayed briefly before departing, and Crystal "looked like he was about to cry," the neighbor said
December 15, 2025 at 3:25 AM
sarahweinman.com
The Snowy Day
Fort Tryon Park covered in snow under a partly cloudy sky
December 14, 2025 at 8:19 PM
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The view never gets old
View of Carnegie Hall from the stage
December 6, 2025 at 6:55 PM
sarahweinman.com
It came up randomly in a book I’m reading but I was profoundly affected by finding the certificate for Marilyn Monroe’s conversion to Judaism in 1956: www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-1...
A reproduction of the certificate of Marilyn Monroe’s conversion to Judaism on July 1, 1956 (the original document sold at auction by Christie’s in 1999)
December 6, 2025 at 2:44 AM
sarahweinman.com
Ouch
Olivia Nuzzi is the Sally Quinn of Generation Z.
December 2, 2025 at 3:59 PM
sarahweinman.com
Will post the link when it’s live but was very happy to be asked by @theweek.com to pick six books that explore critical women’s issues:
Screenshot of p.23 of the December 5, 2025 issue of The Week including my six book recs that explore critical women’s issues: Against Our Will by Susan Brownmiller (1975 — problematic af but enormously influential) Down Girl by Kate Manne (2017 — also everything else she has published since) No Visible Bruises by Rachel Louise Snyder (2019 — I filed this before I saw her rave review of my book, I swear) The Sewing Girl’s Tale by John Wood Sweet (2022 — outstanding treatment of the first major American rape trial) Undue Burden by Shefali Luthra (2024 — amazing reporting on abortions and life post-Roe) The Secret History of the Rape Kit by Pagan Kennedy (2025 — a book I wished had existed while I was writing WITHOUT CONSENT but am so glad exists now)
November 28, 2025 at 7:30 PM
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Happy to see WITHOUT CONSENT as part of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's holiday gift guide: www.jsonline.com/story/life/2...
Several covers of books included in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's holiday gift guide
November 24, 2025 at 2:08 PM
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It wouldn’t surprise me if Andrews doesn’t know this; she isn’t all that smart
Careers that some women, bafflingly, believe we are not entitled to. Last month, Helen Andrews, a recent guest on Ross Douthat’s “Interesting Times” podcast, wrote an essay in Compact magazine that claimed that the feminization of workplaces led to the rise of cancel culture and “wokeness.” This development, she said, signaled the downfall of many institutions, including our system of law. Evidence she cites was that almost 60 percent of law students were women last year. She writes this knowing, I assume, that the United States still has no federal law against marital rape, so if women are somehow ruining our legal system with all our messy emotion, we’ve been pretty slow to act. Apparently our very presence signals imminent systemic collapse.
November 23, 2025 at 9:53 PM
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So many good things about tonight’s event at @splitrockbks.bsky.social but was especially thrilled to meet the bookstore cat
Split Rock Books’ cat, Baxter, totallly in his element on the counter among the books
November 23, 2025 at 5:20 AM
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Absolutely adored this novel and there better be more Rosalyn Drexler reissues soon
Cover of TO SMITHEREENS by Rosalyn Drexler (1926-2025) her 1972 novel which was reissued earlier this year by Hagfish Books
November 21, 2025 at 5:07 PM